Originally posted by DrDoom101Extreme gravitational points wich were caused by dying stars or something.. Instead of imploding it just keeps pulling everything together with extreme proportions..
What are black holes? Dont call me stupid for not knowing this but what are they?
Well.. Something like that.. I hope it gives you an idea.
Okay, there are two forces at work in stars: nuclear fusion, which makes the star burn and pushes outwards, and gravety, which pushes inwards. When a very big star dies, gravety causes the star to collapse. And, since the laws of gravitation involve mass, the bigger the star, the more powerful the force of gravtity. If the star is big enough, than it will collapse into a "black hole," which has such a powerful gravitational pull that not even light can escape it.
Of course, that's just from memory. You could check Wikepedia or something.
Originally posted by Gregory
If the star is big enough, than it will collapse into a "black hole," which has such a powerful gravitational pull that not even light can escape it.
Most data on black holes is rather weak, but the above is deemed to be accurate.
It is also believed that they may be "holes" to other dimensions etc. Truth is, we don't know much about them.
Originally posted by ToMacco
I don't get it.*lays down*
Okay, let's say you have a star and a nearby object. The gravitational force between them is (Gm1m1)/(r2) where G is the gravitational constant, m1 is the mass of the star, m2 is the mass of the object, and r (that's r squared in the equation, by the way) is the distance between the center of the star and the center of the object. Now, suppose the star begins to collapse.
Now (I had to ask for clarification from another bulliten board for this, so don't feel bad about not getting it): The mass of the star equals the density of the star times the volume. Mass is a constant, so when the volume of the star decreases (it's collapsing, remember), density has to increase. This results in what's called a singularity, with infinite density, zero volume, and the same mass the star had before it collapsed.
It's misleading to say that a black hole is somehow more gravitationally powerful than the star before it turned into a black hole. If our Sun turned into a black hole, for example, we wouldn't notice any difference (except that we'd have no heat or light). But the black hole is much, much smaller than the original star, and that means you can get a lot closer to the center of it. The force between a black hole and another object is (Gm1m1)/(r2), the same as before, but we can now make r as small as we want. As r decreases, the gravitational force increases, and it will eventually get so strong that even light can't escape from it once it gets close enough.
Well, that was long-winded, but maybe it helped? Credit to the folks at this forum for helping me out.
Originally posted by ToMacco
Ahhh. . . large things in space.
quite the opposite...most of them are tiny...they just have massive amounts of mass and therefor gravity
supermassive black holes on the other hand are an altogether different and still partly theoretical ball game
ever wondered why some galaxies seem to spin around a centre like water down a plug hole?....the answer could be supermassive black holes...and they could be several billion times the mass of our sun