Get Sucked Into Black Holes

This image highlights and explains various aspects of the black hole visualization.

Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasa-visualization-shows-a-black-hole-s-warped-world/

Structure of a black hole

• Singularity

  • A singularity is an object with an infinitely small volume and therefore an infinite density.

  • Ring singularities are the centers of rotating black holes because points can’t rotate so the singularity must form into a disk of zero thickness.

• Event Horizon

  • The point of no return, it is impossible to leave because at the event horizon the gravity becomes stronger than the speed of light.

• Accretion Disk

  • Particles that spin into the black hole are in the accretion disk. The particles lose their velocity to friction with other particles and eventually just get sucked into the black hole.

• Photon Ring

  • Gravity gets so strong around the black hole it forces photons (Light particles) to move in an orbit. The photon ring is located farther out than the event horizon.

  • A rotating black hole has 2 photon rings, the closer one moves in the same direction and the farther one moves against it or rotating the opposite direction

Illustrations of the stellar evolution of stars with varying initial masses. (Credit: NASA)

https://www.accessscience.com/content/stellar-evolution/65400

Formation of Black Holes

• Stellar Black Hole

  • Formed when a large star runs through its fuel and then collapses getting smaller than its Schwarzschild radius thus giving gravity strong enough to overpower light.

• Intermediate Black Hole

  • Formed when many stars of a cluster collide forming a black hole larger than a stellar one but not nearly the size of a supermassive black hole.

• Supermassive Black Hole

  • One possibility is that before the first stars there were gas clouds called quasi-stars that could collapse into 20 solar masses.

  • Another possibility is tens of hundreds of solar masses are left behind from exploding stars grow together by accumulation of matter

• Binary Black Holes

  • Binary black holes are a set of black holes that orbit each other and theoretically form by moving towards the center of a stellar cluster and then falling into orbit around each other.

• Primordial Black Hole

  • A possibility of how a supermassive black hole is made, was produced from the pressure directly from the Big Bang. A black hole made around this time would have enough time to become a supermassive black hole

• Blue Supergiants

  • Stellar Black holes can only form from very large stars which are usually blue supergiants but blue supergiants can also form neutron stars which are where the stars collapse and are incredibly dense but not dense enough to be a black hole.

The Locations of Black Holes

• Supermassive Black Holes

  • Supermassive black holes are usually found in the center of large galaxies where they consume large amounts of material.

• Stellar Black Holes

  • Stellar black holes usually are anywhere blue supergiants could be found.

• Intermediate Black Holes

  • Found in globular star clusters where several stars once were.

• Binary Black Holes

  • Found near the centers of stellar clusters.

Credit: Lynette Cook

https://www.nature.com/news/galaxy-formation-the-new-milky-way-1.11517

Video

Black Holes Explained – From Birth to Death

Virtual Activity

TU Delft - Black Hole Simulation (360-degree video)

Physical Activity

We use the spacetime sheet demonstration with something heavy or we attach the sheet to the floor giving the illusion of a large object. Gravity Visualized

Works Cited

https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/black_hole_description.html

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasa-visualization-shows-a-black-hole-s-warped-world/

https://www.accessscience.com/content/stellar-evolution/654000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_black_holes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_sphere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_holes

https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/black-holes