The Mystery Behind Black Holes. An Essay

The Mystery Behind Black Holes

Known for its strong gravitational field and captivating mystery, a black hole, also referred as a singularity, remains confusing and indescribable to all of those who attempt to comprehend it; something so fascinating, yet unseen, unrecorded by man, and undetected by technology. Black holes prevail as one of the universe's greatest phenomenons.

The definition of a black hole is “a region of space [that has] a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape” (Smith), which fails to fully describe a black hole. They are not completely understood by humanity, but there are some things that scientists are well aware of, for instance, how they come to be. There are multiple ways to trigger the creation of a black hole, one of them being when a large mass in space accumulates in a very small area. Hawking says “it is like piling more and more books into a library. Eventually, the shelves will give way, and the library will collapse into a black hole” (Hawking). Another way black holes are created is in the collision of two stars within a binary system. After merging, a black hole is born. The third way for a black hole to be created is when a star eventually runs out of fuel, and if the mass of the star is so immense that it can't be held, then the star will shrink and its matter will be compressed into an “infinitely small, infinitely dense point called a singularity. This is the center of a black hole” (Allen). You may be wondering how it is a black hole dies, given that some of them come from dead stars. In other words, how can something that is already dead... die? This happens because of Hawking radiation. In the event horizon of a black hole, there are matter and antimatter particles merging at all the times and converting into energy. As a consequence, if an antimatter particle falls into the singularity of the black hole then it will merge with a matter particle within the singularity of the black hole, and “antimatter destroys matter” (Brandvold). Therefore, the black hole would shrink but it would be almost insignificant since “The bigger the Black hole, the shorter the lifespan” (Brandvold).

Secondly, it is also important to know how black holes work, and to analyze some of the theories that are not yet understood by the public. One of these theories was developed by scientist Albert Einstein, he said that if an astronaut got close to a black hole he or she would not notice it and would eventually pass the event horizon of the black hole (the place of no return). Once you pass the event horizon it is impossible to escape. This theory states that eventually the black hole will pull the astronaut apart resulting in his death. This is called the Firewall paradox. There is another theory that is called the holographic theory which causes extreme controversy, however it is the one that scientist are more inclined to. This ideology states the following; When matter passes the event horizon, the black hole turns everything into information. Information is what everything is made of, its the arrangement of particles. Arrange the particle one way you get a banana, use the same particles arranged differently you get a cellphone, add more and more particles in different arrangements and you can get a human. So essentially all of those substances that pass the event horizon are converted into information and are changed from a 3D state to a 2D state. However the information would be displayed in a hologram and would appear to be 3D but in reality is not. If what entered the black hole is a person, the person would not notice that he's physical state has changed. The final theory also has to do with information, it was developed by Stephen Hawking. He claims that all matter once in the black hole becomes information, but what happens when the black hole disappears? It would mean that all information would be lost, therefore the particles that come out on the black hole would make no sense and “bear no relation of what fell in” (Hawking). If this is true than we would not have any past, because if all information is lost we would have no knowledge of our roots therefore we would have no identity. However, Hawking has presented a thesis that could explain what happens to the information, he says that information is preserved therefore a black hole is not what people used to think it was, it is not a prison with no exit, “this tell us about whether it is possible to fall in a black hole, and come out in another universe” (Hawking). Information would not be accessible but it would be saved.

The death of a star provokes the initiation of a black hole, it is important to add that this only happens if the star that dies has a mass that is more than 2.8 times the mass of the sun; it is then that no force will be able to stop the collapse. Moving on to a different point, it is also important to mention that black holes distort our concepts of space and time. A curvature of space time is created when near a massive body, meaning that if a person were to be orbiting on the edge and manage to not fall into the event horizon, time would slow down for that person. A scenario could be one is orbiting the black hole and you stay that way for a week, you come back to earth only to find out 10 years have gone by, but you have only aged a week. Near the event horizon time slows down, so that week you spent in there it would go by in slow motion, but time back home would stay the same, and if the black hole is big enough that week could even be the equivalent to billions of years down in planet earth.

Subsequently, what has been said above may be confusing, and at times hard to grasp. Nonetheless, this is an extremely fascinating topic, a theorem that will continue to bring controversy upon humanity. Scientists will keep discovering more about black holes, new theories will be proven legitimate, while others might not. Research will advance in this field, with the hope that in the future they will no longer be perplexing to the human brain. Instead, they will be something rather transparent yet staggering for all civilization.

Work Cited

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Kurzgesagt. “Why Black Holes Could Delete The Universe.” (Crash Course.) 24, Aug. 2017.

Ouellette, Jennifer. “Black Hole Firewalls Confound Theoretical Physicists.” Scientific American, 21 Dec. 2012.

Perry, Philip. “The Basis of the Universe May Not Be Energy or Matter but Information.” Big Think, Big Think, 27 Aug. 2017.

Plait, Phil. “Black Holes: Crash Course Astronomy #33.” Youtube, (Crash Course) 25, Sept. 2015.

Skorucak, Anton. “How Does a Star Become a Supernova or a Black Hole? How Does the Star Decide Which One to Turn into?” What Is the Difference between Paramagnetism and Ferromagnetism? 12, May. 2018.

The Information Paradox for Black Holes, S.W. Hawking. Sep 3, 2015.