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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. The Mysteries Of Black Holes 3 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.” The Mysteries Of Black Holes 4 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 The Mysteries Of Black Holes 5 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 The Mysteries Of Black Holes 6 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. The Mysteries Of Black Holes 7 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