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The Mysteries Of Black Holes 1
The Mysteries Of Black Holes
Zach Dastrup
Physics 1010
Professor Demars
April 23rd 2012
The Mysteries Of Black Holes 2
Abstract
Black holes are something that we still yet to fully understand, but yet we do know quite
a bit about them Black holes form after a giant star dies and the mass condenses so much
that the gravity and energy are almost limitless. There are many theories to what black
holes could be but some of the most interesting could indeed be true. People say that they
could be a gateway to another dimension or even time travel. The more logic explanation
of what a black hole would do is simply squeeze anything thinner than a sheet of paper.
Black holes open a hole new world to explanations and mysteries.
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Black Holes
One of the strongest things in the universe is something called a black hole. Black
holes are something that are light years away but yet we claim to know much about them.
The question that arises is, are Black holes faction or fiction? In movies they are seen as a
possible teleporter that will send a spaceship to another galaxy, which people refer to as a
wormhole. They have also been seen as a something that rules that galaxy and devours
anything in its path. These fact or fictions may seem a little out there but at the same time
isn’t anything possible? If there is something so far away that takes light, years to get
there then that leaves the door open to any possibility on what a black holes purposes
really are. NASA and other astronomers say that the gravity is so strong in a black hole
that light cannot even escape the strong gravity pull. We have been able to study black
holes so well that we know how they are formed and the power that they have, but yet we
don't know what their exact purpose is. They are so far away that the likely hood of us
ever sending a probe or a spaceship to one is almost impossible.
In the science article 'The Quantum Mechanics of Black Holes', Scientific
American, Steven Hawkins wrote an article that talks about what exactly how black holes
are formed. “Imagine a star with a mass 10 times that of the sun. During most of its
lifetime of about a billion years the star will generate heat at its center by converting
hydrogen into helium. When the star had exhausted its nuclear fuel, there would be
nothing to maintain the outward pressure, and the star would begin to collapse because of
its own gravity. According to the special theory of relativity nothing can travel faster than
light, so that if light cannot escape, nothing else can either.”
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Scientifically there are four kinds of black holes that are classified by their energy
and size. The first type is called Static or is also known as (Schwarzschild). The
Second one is called Charged or (Reissner-Nordsrom). Rotating (Kerr) is the third,
and Supermassive. The make up of each of the blacks holes are particularly the
same. The Make up of the black holes consists of the Photon Sphere and Jelsoft
Enterprises wrote the definition of the photon sphere on physicsforums.com. “A
spherical surface round a non-rotating black hole (or other extremely compact
spherically symmetric body) containing all the possible closed orbits of a photon.”
The Event Horizon, which means “the point of no return”, and the Singularity, which
is the center. The Rotating black holes that have two Photon Spheres are called
Ergospheres meaning “A region located outside a rotating black hole. Its name is
derived from the Greek word ergon meaning work.” The Definition was defined by
Oxford University Press at oxforddictionaries.com.
The Size of balck holes actually depends on what it wants to be itself. After a
star dies and the gravity is condenses the size of the black hole is determined by how
compressed it is. The size of the black hole originates from the star that it came from, for
instance the star that warms out planet is called the sun. The sun is enormous compared
to the earth and on April 6th 2011 Calex Young said “The sun is 864,400 miles
(1,391,000 kilometers) across. This is about 109 times the diameter of Earth. The sun
weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth. It is so large that about 1,300,000 planet
Earths can fit inside of it.” Having said that, and knowing how large our sun is, It still
isn’t big enough for it to be a black hole after dying. Now thinking of a star 10x the mass
and size of the sun, the black hole has just the same amount of mass but has been
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condensed beyond comprehension. Ted Bun a researcher of black holes said “
Calculating the mass of a star that condenses, it would be
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms or 10^31.
Locating a black hole can be difficult because not only are they black and
dark, they are light years away. The question arises, how do we actually know that
there are black holes in outer space? Dr. Alan Smale (Director), within the
Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) said “when a black hole passes through a cloud
of interstellar matter, or is close to another "normal" star, the black hole can accrete
matter into itself. The heating ionizes the atoms, and when the atoms reach a few
million Kelvin, they emit X-rays. The X-rays are sent off into space before the matter
crosses the Schwarzschild radius and crashes into the singularity. Thus we can see
this X-ray emission.” Black holes weren’t known until1916 when they were
discovered by Karl Schwarzschild
Do we truly know everything there is to know about black holes? No, not in
the slightest, there will always be questions that won’t be answered in their fullness
because of the limitations we have. Black holes just add to mystery of space and how
things can still defy the theories that we abide by. The question will always be raised
about whether black holes lead somewhere, are they portals to another dimension?
Although Albert Einstein said that time travel would never be possible he could still
be proven wrong, but will there ever come an opportunity for us to prove or
disprove his statement. There is no much energy contained in a black hole, so that
proposes the question if we would ever be able to harness that energy to solve our
energy problems. We would have an endless energy source and we wouldn't have to
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worry about using up all of our recourses. Hopefully one of these days we will be
able to test what a black hole truly is to better understand the mysteries of the
universe.
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References
Contributors' names (Last edited date). Title of resource. Retrieved from
http://Web address for OWL resource
Heather R. Smith of NASA Educational TechnologyServices
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/what-is-a-black-holek4.html
Sean Kessick Saturday, March 19, 2011
http://effectivepapers.blogspot.com/2011/03/research-paper-on-black-holes.html
— Stephen W. Hawking
'The Quantum Mechanics of Black Holes',
Scientific American, 1977, 236, 34-40.
Oxford University Press at oxforddictionaries.com
Dr. Alan Smale (Director)
High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center, within the Astrophysics
Science Division (ASD) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/black_holes.html