Professor Bodus
Astronomy
Matthew Ryan Scott
December 6th, 2015
Black Holes: The Epic Mystery of Space

Black Holes: The Epic Mystery of Space The one aspect of space that provides a sort of horror element to the universe, to me, has always been the Black Hole. There is a very deep mystery surrounding Black Holes, and that uncertainty is very scary. Last year, my wife and I sat down on a Friday night, with pizza, and began watching the amazing movie, Interstellar. The one aspect of that film that still resonates with me is the mystery of the nature of the inner workings of a Black Hole. On that note, today, I would like to dive deeper into the research of Astronomers to have a better understanding of these wonders of space. The reality of a Black Hole is that it is not actually empty space at all, but rather a large amount of matter squeezed into an extremely tiny space. If we look at the many theories surrounding the existence of Black Holes, then it is presumable that a Black Hole is the most powerful force in all of our known universe, and beyond. It is widely known around the world, that the majority of people are familiar with the term “Black Hole”, but the reality is that the majority of people know next to nothing about them. Black Holes are formed when a star basically runs out of the fuel to keep burning. A star will begin to collapse under the sheer force of its own gravity after it has ceased to continue burning off gases (Frost, www.quora.com). A good example of this would be like letting the air out of a balloon, ever so slowly. After a specific star has compacted itself to a certain size, the overall mass remains constant, but that star’s gravity would then become so overwhelmingly powerful that nothing would be able to escape that gravitational force. A man named Karl Schwarzschild came up with a mathematical solution to explain this size to weight ration known as the Schwarzschild radius. (Bunn, Black holes FAQ). After a black hole has been formed, an invisible line exists around it, known as the event horizon. After any specific object has crossed the event horizon, at that point it becomes impossible for said object to have any hope of escape. If black holes are in fact proven to exist, beyond the realm of theoretical physics, then they would likely be a very common occurrence in the universe. In the year 1915, in his “Theory of Relativity”, Albert Einstein introduced such a proposition of potential occurrences (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). During the 1930s, physicists Volkoff, Oppenheimer, and Snyder were able to use mathematics to prove the existence of black holes. Ever since this discovery, black holes have, and will always remain a very important part of science and the study of our universe. It has been proven that black holes has an infinite gravitational effect on light, time, and the fabric of the space time continuum. All bodies in space have some level of gravitational force. According to Albert Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity”, this is because bodies in space with a large enough mass actually warp space (Chaisson, pg. 77). To give an example of this, let us take a sheet of cloth and stretch it at the four corners, and then set a bowling ball in the center of the sheet. This sheet will then warp downwards. If at this point we place a golf ball on the edge of the sheet, it will then be drawn toward the bowling ball. But, if this golf ball were to be travelling at a speed that couldn’t be affected by this pull, it would be traveling at what is known as the escape velocity. Escape velocity is the speed that an object has to be travelling in order to escape a gravitational force (Chaisson, pg. 77). When speaking of black holes, since their size is always in a state of decreasing, and the weight remains constant, that would mean that the escape velocity would be infinite, therefor nothing could escape the gravitational pull, not even light (Chaisson, pg. 196). Light consists of waves and particles. In 1676, Danish astronomer Ole Christensen discovered that light travels at a very high but measureable rate of speed, known as light speed (Carnegie.edu). This would in fact indicate that light is subject to the forces of nature, such as gravity. At first glance, it would seem as though light would not be affected by gravity, because of the speed that it is travelling. But, if that gravity were strong, as in the case of a black hole, then gravity could theoretically be trapped by a black hole. The fact that a black hole’s escape velocity is infinite, explains why light can be trapped inside a black hole. This is also the reason for a black hole being black. After light has passed across the event horizon light is unable to bounce off anything, as such it wouldn’t be able to be seen. This is why a black hole appears as a void. Once inside the event horizon, light travels at a very slow rate of speed eventually becoming invisible to an observer, due to the heavy gravity and the overall effect on time governed by the black hole (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). Nothing exists in our universe that could ever hope to escape from the pull of a black hole, so this is why time stops beyond the event horizon. The only possible way for some object to escape this unfortunate fate would be for a very strange anomaly to occur, known as a white hole. If the mathematics of a black hole somehow became reversed, this white hole would be created (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). A white hole is the exact opposite of a black hole, in the sense that nothing would ever fall in, but only spit out (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). A white hole is only a theory, however, as the existence of a white hole is unlikely (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). On the other end of the unlikely theory spectrum we have the wormhole theory. A wormhole would in all actuality be a realistic tear in the fabric of space. The fact that time has no effect on a black or white hole; an object would have the potential to be spit out anywhere in time or space (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). If an object were to fall into a black hole that had been transformed into a wormhole, it could possibly avoid hitting the singularity (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). This would prevent the object from becoming spaghetti and being compacted to base particle size. On the contrary, it would follow the closest thing to a straight line, eventually reaching the other side of the wormhole (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). A wormhole would be highly unstable according to theoretical calculations, however (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). If an object were to pass through this hypothetical wormhole, it would more than likely collapse (Bunn, Black Holes FAQ). Even though there is significance to these theoretical calculations, it isn’t very likely that wormholes actually exist. If wormholes did, in fact, exist it would send a shockwave throughout the entire science fiction world, and that of our own world. Black holes are one of the most mind boggling anomalies that exist in our universe. In the many decades that follow, astronomers may discover new facts about them. However, I doubt that black holes contain the answers to the ever present question of why? , as is touched on in the movie “Interstellar”. In our lifetime, black holes will likely always remain a mystery, but there is no telling what the future may hold.

References
Bunn, Ted (2015). Black holes FAQ. Retrieved on December 3rd, 2015 from: http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/Education/BHfaq.html#q3
Carnegiescience.edu (2015). 1676: Ole Rømer Measures the Speed of Light. Retrieved on December 3rd, 2015 from: https://cosmology.carnegiescience.edu/timeline/1676.
Chaisson, Eric (April, 1990). Relatively speaking. Relativity, black holes, and the fate of the universe. Published by W.W. Norton & Company.
Frost, Robert (August, 2015). How are black holes formed? Is there any proof of ‘formation of black hole?’ Retrieved on December 3rd, 2015 from: https://www.quora.com/How-are-the-black-holes- formed-Is-there-any-any-proof-of-formation-of-black-hole.