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BLACK HOLES…
“Journey that begins where everything ends…”
If you’re my age, and if you’re a guy, then I’m willing to bet Disney’s “The Black Hole” made it onto your television set on more than one Saturday afternoon growing up; after all, who could forget the terrifying evil robot Maximillian and that evil stare. I managed to find a copy of the original trailer below for anyone interested in reliving their childhood for a moment or two.
Compared to what we know today, back then space was still largely uncharted territory, and we knew very little, which made movies like the Black Hole so fun. Today when I think of Black Holes, I think about CERN, the the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider, the largest, most complex experimental facility ever built, and the largest single machine in the world.
According to Wikipedia: It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland, and some scientists have theorized it could actually create tiny black holes here on earth, obviously causing us quite a problem. TODAY, when I hear about black holes, I think of Cern, and I think to myself, “As long as some black hole comes and sucks aways Obama, then perhaps the project won’t have been in vain… even if it sucks the whole planet it with it. I’m kidding.
WELL, NOT REALLY. THERE’S BARACK NOW…
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If you managed to stay awake in astronomy class, or if you saw that fairly decent Matthew McConaughey movie, you’re familiar with black holes by now. These interstellar vacuum cleaners have such an insanely strong gravitational pull that anything that gets sucked inside has no chance of ever escaping. Our understanding of black holes has increased dramatically since Einstein made them a thing in 1915, but they remain some of the most mysterious and powerful phenomena in the known universe. Here are 10 things you probably didn’t know about them.
1. They’re completely invisible
There’s a reason black holes are called black. Their gravity is so intense not even light can escape, so without any light emissions, they’re impossible to observe. We can, however, see some of the effects that this extreme gravity has on objects nearby.
2. You’re most likely orbiting one right now
The reason our celestial home, the Milky Way galaxy, looks kind of like water swirling down a drain is that, well, there is a drain. It’s called Sagittarius A* and all evidence suggests that it’s a super-massive black hole, right in the center of the galaxy.
3. They form from the remnants of massive exploding stars
When a big star (and by big I mean many, many times larger than the size of our sun) dies, it explodes violently in a supernova. The star’s core is left to collapse in on itself, and if that core is massive enough, there will be nothing to stop it from collapsing into a spot of infinite density. And that, kids, is how black holes are born.
4. They come in all different sizes
Astronomers hypothesize that they can range from micro black holes with masses as low as 22 micrograms, to super-massive objects with masses 40 billion (no that’s not a typo) times that of our sun.
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5. Black holes eat stars for breakfast
With their inescapable gravitational pull, anything that drifts too close will be devoured, including stars.
6. They fire off powerful jets of plasma
Sometimes a black hole tries to eat too much matter at once, and it produces some blowback. Imagine trying to fill a tiny bucket with a powerful firehose. Similarly, the black hole shoots off huge plasma streams called relativistic jets, which can reach hundreds of thousands of light years in length.
7. They make Quasars, the brightest objects in the universe
Quasars are the most energetic and luminous objects in the known universe. The Quasar known as S5 0014+81 is 300 trillion times brighter than the sun, or 25,000 times brighter than all the stars in the Milky Way combined. And it generates all that power by feeding off the energy of a super-massive black hole, found in the center of every Quasar.
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8. A black hole isn’t a hole at all
It’s a sphere. And, at least as far as we know, there are no tunnels to alternate realities either. We’re looking at you, Matthew McConaughey.
9. They’re powerful enough to alter time itself…
The gravity well of a black hole is so intense that time itself moves slower (relative to an outside observer) the nearer you get to the event horizon
10. … and collapse the laws of physics
Inside a black hole, for all intents and purposes, space and time no longer exist. Zero volume, infinite density, you get the idea.
David Burbach rides motorcycles for a living and won the science award in sixth grade. Find him lame-o tweeting @welivefreephoto.
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See the original article here at Supercompressor:
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