What are black holes?
Asked on: Sep 13, 2023 05:04 PM
Imagine you're eating a super-duper, mega-giant gummy bear. As you eat more and more, your tummy gets bigger and bigger, right? Now, think of a black hole as a cosmic tummy that's so big it can swallow up stars! But unlike your tummy, once something goes into a black hole, it never comes out. That's because black holes have super strong gravity. Gravity is like an invisible hand that pulls things toward each other - it's what keeps us on the ground instead of floating off into space!
Black holes are places in space where this gravity is so strong that nothing can escape from it - not even light (which is why we call them 'black' holes). They're like cosmic vacuum cleaners, sucking up everything around them. But don't worry – they're very far away from us and won't suck us up!
Scientists believe black holes are formed when a big star explodes and then collapses in on itself. This makes them very dense (which means there's a lot of stuff packed into a small space) and very heavy - so they have lots of gravity.
Even though we can't see black holes directly (because they don't let any light out for us to see), scientists can still study them by looking at the things around them. For example, if there's a star near to a black hole, the black hole might pull on the star and make it move in strange ways. By watching these stars, scientists can learn more about the black holes themselves.
Reference: NASA
