Black Holes
By Nim
Black Holes
According to Google, Black Holes are 'a region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape', but to me black holes are amazing,intriguing objects that trap anything that comes nearby.
Black Holes are formed by an object becoming extremely tiny. Each object has a Schwarzschild Radius. This is the amount of space that, if you were to collapse into, would create a black hole. A black hole's gravitational pull is so great that not even light can escape it. If Earth was somehow made as small as a peanut, it would create a black hole.
If you fall inside a black hole, all the images around you will be warped. Once the darkness covers half your view, you have reached the Photon Sphere. Light cannot enter or leave the black hole, but it does orbit the black hole. Theoretically, you could see the back of your own head. If someone was watching you fall into this hole, they would see you floating slower and slower to the black hole, until you reached the edge. Your light would be taken from you and they would see you turning redder and redder until you faded away. For you, everything would be fine, except for the fact that you would die. You would die by all the gravitational pulls you would be receiving. The pulls are called tidal forces. Your body would be stretched so much that scientists wouldn't call it stretching anymore. They call it 'spaghettification'.
Black holes are one of the most darkest things in the Universe. But they can produce the brightest light in the universe. When black holes are eating stars, the gas and debris from them swirl into 'accretion discs'. Before the star enters the black hole, the debris spins at unimaginable speeds and makes friction. This friction generates heat, and this heat is extremely bright. It is so bright, that it has its own name. A quasar. To put it simply, there are massive black holes that lie in the middle of even bigger galaxies. These are called active galactic nuclei. Their energy is produced in the form of a jet. If a lot of this jet is coming towards Earth it is called a quasar. But if it is completely coming at Earth, it is called a blazar. For example, the 100 000th picture The Hubble Telescope took was of a star, a couple of hundred light years away from Earth, that had about the same light as a quasar, 9 billion light years away from Earth. But quasars don't last forever, and the pictures and light we receive from these amazing phenomenons are from billions of years ago, made before our Solar System was created! They are one the most ancient things in the Universe, but if you were to somehow go to a quasar right now, if would no longer be burning.
*Quoting Vsauce's video 'What's The Brightest Thing In The Universe?'*
"What we see today, are just their ghosts, light that left when they were active, that traveled longer than they could live."
*It is a beautiful sentence. Its just touches my heart. Poor quasars...*