[germainebull]

Yesterday, I watched a documentary about black holes. This piece stated that 'black holes' are simply stars that have collapsed under their own weight. Curiously, black holes devour whatever crosses their paths and thus keep growing.
I however couldn't make sense of this. Can someone explain 'black holes' in simple/understandable terms?

[darkfran85]

oh yes black holes is a great theme for talk and talk, i like the astronomy and any thing about the universe

[FuZyOn]

Black holes confuse the crap out of me, especially since we've not explored the whole universe. We can't possibly know how much they expand.

[germainebull]

Black holes confuse the crap out of me, especially since we've not explored the whole universe. We can't possibly know how much they expand.

The fact that the human race has not explored a significant portion of the universe causes me to think that some of the theories that we carelessly rubbish could be true. I mean, there is no point in rejecting claims about an entity you do not have comprehensive knowledge about.

[chikitta]

I havent5the slightest idea about black holes looking forward to read from the others to know what it is all about

[JusApee]

Black Holes are actually dead stars, but they can still be created out of various sources. For example:

• Shrink stuff much enough - if you shrink stuff enough, the density becomes so big that the escaping speed becomes bigger than c (speed of light), hence you get a black hole. Studies showed that shrinking the Earth to the size of a peanut would transform it into a black hole. Or when Ant Man (the movie) shrinked to molecular level, he should have been transformed into a black hole himself. That's why the movie is not realistic.
• Add enough energy - in basic terms, if you heat something to a certain temperature (obviously not a temperature we can achieve in labs), you get a Kuglblitz Black Hole.
• Dead stars - when a star dies and shrinks, it's mass becomes too big for the star to handle and it collapses onto itself, getting much denser and smaller and eventually becoming a black hole.

Now to answer your question: yes, a black hole "eats" everything it touches. However, the matter is still there. When matter is sucked into a black hole, it is attracted to its singularity and morphed, reshaped, resized, but not destroyed. Nothing just disappears out of existence <-- general law of physics.
As they "eat" stuff around, their mass increases (obviously), therefore they become fatter and fatter, bigger and bigger. In my theory, this is the proof that the matter does not disappear once swallowed by a black hole.
Any further question, ask them and I shall answer if possible.

[germainebull]

Black Holes are actually dead stars, but they can still be created out of various sources. For example:

• Shrink stuff much enough - if you shrink stuff enough, the density becomes so big that the escaping speed becomes bigger than c (speed of light), hence you get a black hole. Studies showed that shrinking the Earth to the size of a peanut would transform it into a black hole. Or when Ant Man (the movie) shrinked to molecular level, he should have been transformed into a black hole himself. That's why the movie is not realistic.
• Add enough energy - in basic terms, if you heat something to a certain temperature (obviously not a temperature we can achieve in labs), you get a Kuglblitz Black Hole.
• Dead stars - when a star dies and shrinks, it's mass becomes too big for the star to handle and it collapses onto itself, getting much denser and smaller and eventually becoming a black hole.

Now to answer your question: yes, a black hole "eats" everything it touches. However, the matter is still there. When matter is sucked into a black hole, it is attracted to its singularity and morphed, reshaped, resized, but not destroyed. Nothing just disappears out of existence <-- general law of physics.
As they "eat" stuff around, their mass increases (obviously), therefore they become fatter and fatter, bigger and bigger. In my theory, this is the proof that the matter does not disappear once swallowed by a black hole.
Any further question, ask them and I shall answer if possible.

Thanks for your comprehensive analysis. Are you by any chance an astronomist?

Are black holes literally 'hollow'?

[JusApee]

Thanks for your comprehensive analysis. Are you by any chance an astronomist?

Are black holes literally 'hollow'?

I'm not an astronomist, nor physicist, I'm simply passionate about astronomy and astrophysics. I read a lot of this stuff.

Black holes are definitely not hollow. As they eat things around, they expand, aka their mass expands. So we can't say they're hollow. They sure look so, because no light inside can escape, but matter surely is inside, because there's no gravity without mass. So no, they're not hollow. Physicists think that all the matter absorbed is absorbed in the center, called "the singularity", the point of infinite density which produces the gravitational field.

[germainebull]

Thanks for your comprehensive analysis. Are you by any chance an astronomist?

Are black holes literally 'hollow'?

I'm not an astronomist, nor physicist, I'm simply passionate about astronomy and astrophysics. I read a lot of this stuff.

Black holes are definitely not hollow. As they eat things around, they expand, aka their mass expands. So we can't say they're hollow. They sure look so, because no light inside can escape, but matter surely is inside, because there's no gravity without mass. So no, they're not hollow. Physicists think that all the matter absorbed is absorbed in the center, called "the singularity", the point of infinite density which produces the gravitational field.

Wow! You really are knowledgeable on this subject! Congrats!

Based on your post, I'll conduct further studies about black holes.