The Hole in Our Stars

The question today is serious. It’s something that many people have wondered about and others still don’t know it existed. This one is for them physics guys. Hope they like it.

What Is a Black Hole?

To be fair, I haven’t read much about the theoretical stuff behind it and all. I’ve heard about it merely from many movies and also from some books I read (Yep, from Stephen Hawkings and all).

Black hole is a stage in the lifecycle of the stars. Stars often have a very high gravitational pull but they don’t crumble under that pull as the fusion reaction inside the star produces energy to counterbalance the gravitation.

When massive stars (about 50 times more massive than our sun) run out of fuel, i.e., hydrogen, they start contracting. After a while, the contraction heats up the star again and it starts fusing Helium to Carbon. This leads to a separation in the star where the outer layers start expanding. This stage is called the Red Supergiant.

Once again, the star can no longer fuse Helium and thus, it starts contracting again. Super massive stars then go through different rounds of fusion, fusing elements till they reach Iron and can no longer fuse. Iron is very stable and it’s fusion requires very high energy input which is not achieved. The star then begins to collapse into itself before bursting out with tremendous energy release as a Supernova.

The remnants of highly massive stars, after exploding in a supernova, turn into black holes. Active research is going on in this field and there are many interesting stuff discovered that you can find here.

Black holes are highly massive and dense objects that have a gravitational pull so strong that even light can’t escape. Some people believe that black holes serve as portals to other dimensions while others claim that black holes hold the key to the discovery of the beginnings of our universe.

The universe is a scary place with all these freaks of nature spread out. I’m glad that we are there on a little blue planet somewhere in this whole universe and we are advanced enough that I can write about it on my blog! Seems like a wonder at times.