Learning About Black Holes We just keep learning about how objects in space work. For example, it was believed black holes had nothing to do with star formation because the pressure they put out was far too much to form stars. Guess what? Not all black holes are created equal. A smaller black hole has been found in a dwarf galaxy which puts out a lot less pressure than the big ones and is believed to be forming stars. I have often wondered about what was inside black holes and if the pressure inside them is the same as what they are putting out on the outside. There are those who think there could be galaxies filled with stars and planets inside black holes. Perhaps this is true or maybe there are complete universes inside with their own rules which are different than the rules for the rest of the universe? There has been a lot of talk about building a Dyson Sphere. Not that we would or could build one, but that super advanced aliens may have done it. A Dyson Sphere is a cover around an object to trap its energy for use. It would be around a star theoretically. I have to think any race this advanced would be able to tap energy from a black hole which would be far more plentiful. It would mean however the energy trapped would have to travel huge distances to the home planet and this could mean it would not be practical to do. Advanced races might have another use for a black hole and that is as a sort of filling station for their spacecraft. If they have achieved propulsion based on quantum entanglement, which would be instant, they could just zip up to a black hole, fuel up and return in no time. There has to be a lot of uses for the energy from a black hole for some race which might be capable of using it. When Australia was first founded the British used it as a jail, a penal colony. Why am I mentioning this you might ask? I was just thinking that some day if we find we can enter a black hole, it might make a great jail. Can you imagine sending prisoners to a black hole? You might not even need guards. It might be like the roach motel where roaches get in but they never get out. No, I am not saying to poison the prisoners. Why is it most or maybe all galaxies have a black hole in the center? Was the black hole there first and somehow was responsible for the galaxy forming? Could scientists be wrong about the Big Bang and it was only black holes which were exploded out and the stars and planets came later? I think this is one of those things which would be hard to prove either way. It is estimated that if we could count all the stellar matter’s mass, black holes would account for about one percent. Scientists have just found a black hole which is relatively close to earth. The black hole is in the constellation Telescopium and is only about 1,000 light years away. Scientists are saying it is in our own back yard. If we look at the black hole in the center of our galaxy, we find it is over 25,000 lights years away. It is said on a clear night we can see two stars orbiting this nearby black hole with the, excuse the term, naked eye. The reason it wasn’t discovered before this is black holes being invisible were not even know to exist. While calculation indicated they existed, the first black hole wasn’t discovered until 1972. It was Cygnus X-1. Scientists like to make guesses about things and black holes are no different. The latest guess for the number of black holes in the observable universe is 40 quadrillion. These kinds of numbers boggle the mind and are hard for us even to imagine. So many times, I have heard the gravity in a black hole is so strong no light can escape from it, yet there has been one or two instances where scientists have claimed they saw light exiting a black hole. In a report published by Stanford, astrophysicists reported the first detection of light from behind a black hole which should, according to current understanding, not be able to do that. Scientists claim the space around the black hole is being warped and bent and this is why we see this light. This light seen from behind is supposedly coming out of the black hole. Even though black holes are said to be invisible there is a disk of material which floats around the edge as it is being drawn into the black hole and this is visible now that we know what to look for. Scientists think a tiny black hole about ten times the mass of the sun could form in a couple of seconds. It is thought two neutron stars could form a black hole if they merged. A neutron star is a giant star which has ten or more solar masses. At the end of its life, its core gets tremendously compressed. It is also thought if a black hole swallows a neutron star it will expand in size. It is also believed if two black holes collide, they create ripples in time and space. Here is an interesting fact about black holes. When a black hole swallows a star, it does not diminish the amount of gravity exerted by the universe. That amount of gravity is still present. So far, we have not found a black hole which ate an entire galaxy. My thought on this is how would we know? One of the things people seem to be fascinated with is what happens if we fell into a black hole. If we could survive, which seems extremely doubtful, time would be different. You would look like a stick because you would be stretched lengthwise and compressed width wise. Guess what this is called? Give up, it spaghettification. So far, we have seen a black hole at the incredible distance of 13.1 billion light years. This may soon change after the Webb telescope goes online because it gathers far more light than the Hubble space telescope. It has been found that not only can black holes expand from eating material, they can shrink if not eating. This is due to a type of radiation they put out known as Hawking radiation. Eventually they could disappear entirely and probably many have.
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