Jae Hyuk Kim

Personal Project

November 23, 2017

Black Holes

In our universe there are galaxies that includes stars, planets and their corpses. One of

the most complicated type of the corpse is a black hole. To astronomers black holes are a

mystery that still isn’t solved to this date. People ask what is a black hole and why is it so

important to research about them. Black holes may be not interesting but it is still important to

the humanity and could help us understand the universe that we live in.

Black hole is a region of space where the gravity is so intense that even light can’t

escape. This is why we call it ‘black’ hole. Since light can’t escape its gravitational field, there is

no light that reflects towards us, leaving it looking like empty. Black hole bends a fabric in space

called spacetime. The image on the left

shows how strong different stars bend

the space time. Black hole consists of

the singularity and the event horizon.

Singularity is a point placed in the middle

of the black hole. It has a finite mass in a

space of zero volume, meaning that its density is infinite. Event horizon is a notional boundary

around a black hole beyond which no light or other radiation can escape. In the event horizon

the gravitational pull is exactly the speed of light. Inside the event horizon, the gravity is faster

than light while outside of the event horizon, the gravity is less than the speed of light.
Astronomers calls the event horizon, ‘the point of no return’ since nothing can be faster than

light according to Einstein's theory of relativity(published in 1916).

Some people mistakes the black holes as a vacuum just floating in the universe but it’s

really not. Although black holes do eat other stars to grow size, the gravity follows the same rule

that is applied to everything. Gravity is determined by the mass of the star and the distance

between you and the star. Stronger gravitational pull if the star has bigger mass and as the

distance between you and the star gets closer. Even we have our own gravity field because we

have mass. If 2 objects have a same mass, the gravity would be the same. This means that if

we replaced our sun with a black hole with the same mass, nothing will change to our solar

system. So how does the distance affect the pull? Let’s say that earth is condensed to half of its

volume and that we are on the surface. Then, even though they both have the same mass, the

gravity would be much heavier in the condensed earth than the uncondensed earth. This is

because the distance between you and the star decreased. This wouldn’t happen if you were

standing in the same coordinates before the condense since the mass and the distance would

be the same. People think black holes have much more stronger gravitational pull, but this is

true while wrong. A singularity of a black hole has no volume, so there is no surface. More

empty space means that you could travel further and closer to the black hole without getting

interrupted by the surface. Closer distance means stronger gravity, and this is why people think

black holes have stronger gravity. Overall, black holes are just stars condensed into infinitely

small space.

If black holes were to be observed, it would just look like empty space. Then how do we

know it’s there? There are many indirect evidence of black holes existing. We could know that
there is a black hole in centers of galaxies by observing the orbiting star’s movement. We could

also detect X-rays emitted by the black holes when eating stars. The most easiest way is to just

observe. As I mentioned earlier gravity is faster than

the speed of light inside the event horizon, so

therefore no light reflects back to us. But outside the

black hole, the gravity is still strong but not stronger

than the speed of light. This means that It won’t pull

the light completely to itself but would still have

enough force to bend it. As you can observe from this

picture, the black hole distorted the light that is emitting from a star. The black hole is too far to

consume the star but still affects the light that is coming towards us, And using this, we could

anticipate that the black hole is there.

Stars doesn’t have a life biologically but has one in astronomy. Inside a star, there is

gravity, that pulls everything towards its center. The power of the gravity depends on the star’s

mass. More mass they have the stronger gravitation. In the core of a star, the gravitational pull

is so strong that it starts to condense elements into heavier ones. Hydrogen condenses into

helium and helium condenses to beryllium and so on. This process is called nuclear fusion. It

releases fusion energy towards the outside from the center, opposing the gravitational pull,

creating a balance. This balance between the gravity and fusion energy is what determines a

star’s life. As time pass, the elements that are fusing reaches iron(fe) and the fusion stops

because iron is strongly bonded together. Iron constantly builds up in the star’s core and the

fusion energy released becomes smaller and smaller. The balance breaks down and the star

collapses. The star is now considered dead. First the corpse can become a white dwarf but if it
has enough gravity, it would become a neutron star, and if it has really strong gravity, it would

collapse further and become a black hole. All white dwarf, neutron star and black hole is

extremely dense. When it does have enough gravitational force to become a black hole, the

gravity pulls everything into its core, causing an

implosion. Then supernova occurs where the core

explodes. The image on the left shows a star that

mysteriously disappeared captured by the Hubble

Telescope. Astronomers anticipate that it became

a black hole. The black hole will have mass

related to the mass of the star. There are 3 main types of black holes by the mass, which are

miniature, stellar and supermassive black holes. Miniature black holes are hypothetical black

holes. It was suggested by Stephen Hawking in 1971. He says that they were most likely

created in the early universe. There are no observations of miniature black holes to this date.

Stellar black holes are the most common black hole out of the 3 types. They are created from

the death of an star as mentioned before. Supermassive black holes are on the center of

galaxies. Our galaxy has the black

hole Sagittarius A and it has about 4

million times of mass of our sun. All

stars, planets including our solar

system orbits Sagittarius A.

So black hole is created when gravity is so strong that the mass keeps collapsing and

condensed. Therefore, in theory, anything with mass can become a black hole, even with only

light. Let’s say we have a box full of food. It’s capacity is full, meaning that nothing can fit in
there. But, if we use enough force and energy to get more food inside the box, we would be able

to create a black hole. The capacity is at maximum capacity, so instead of increasing the

capacity, black hole increases in size as it consumes more mass.

In 1974, Stephen Hawking discovered what’s now called ‘Hawking Radiation’. It was

radiation that was emitted from a black hole. This meant that black holes will eventually die after

time. The discovery shocked the astronomers since people though black hole had no lifespan.

The process of hawking radiation gets faster as the black hole becomes smaller. In quantum

physics, 2 virtual particles are created from nothing, then annihilate each other in no time. This

happens everywhere in the universe. When this happens in the border of the black hole aka

event horizon, one particles is pulled inside the black hole while other escapes, becoming a real

mass in the form of radiation. The other particle become an antiparticle, so it takes away mass

from the black hole. The black hole will slowly lose mass overtime and die. Our universe is still

too young that no black holes has passed away. A black hole with a mass of around only 1 solar

mass will evaporate in around 2×10^66 years, but our universe is only 13.8×10^9 years old. It’s

even more time since there are no black holes born with 1 solar mass.

When a black hole is alive, it consumes anything that gets close enough. Right now we

don’t exactly know what happens if things fall into a black hole, but we think it’s one of 2

possibility. The first possibility is that an object fallen into a black hole will get stretched so much

that it becomes one atom wide. This is called ‘spaghettification’. This is because as the object

pass the event horizon, it will experience different gravitational pull on its different parts. The

closer part of the object to the black hole would experience much more stronger gravity than the
part that is furthest away from the black hole. Second theory is that there would be a firewall

that will terminate you in an instant.

Time also differs as you fall into a black hole. This is because black holes also bend

time. If you are falling into a black hole, other people that are observing will see you move

slower as you get closer to the black hole. When you reached the event horizon, the other

people would just see you stuck there forever. From your point of view, you’ll see the universe

speeding up as you travel further. This occurs because of time dilation. The faster you’re

moving the slower time moves.

Black holes aren't just dangerous only because it could devour our earth, but also

dangerous because it could break the law of quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics

information is basically the description of any one particle. This would include the particle’s

mass, arrangement of atoms, temperature, position and so on. For example, coal and diamond

are both made out of carbon but they are different. This is because it has information. We would

be able to simulate the universe both backwards and forwards if we were able to get all the

information in the universe at the same time. Without information, everything would be the
same. According to quantum mechanics, information is indestructible. If we burn a piece of

paper we get ash. But if we measure all the radiation that was sent out and use the ash, in

theory, we could reconstruct the paper. This is because information is still alive somewhere in

the universe. But black holes does the opposite. Black hole is basically a blender that blends

everything into a same material. If you throw an apple and an orange inside a black hole, we

don’t know what went in and which one went in first. The only thing that black hole gives away is

hawking radiation, which only tells about the mass. This means that it destroyed information,

which breaks one of the basic principle of quantum mechanics. This is the information paradox.

This problem has few options. First option is that information is lost. This meant that our

discovered laws of physics would have to be redone creating a chaos. Second option is that

information is hidden. The black hole might create another universe or leave an information

diamond after it dies with all the information. We might be living inside a black hole since our

universe also started from a singularity. The last option is the ‘Holographic principle’ and it is the

most known option. Stephen Hawking thought information was destroyed while other physicists

such as Leonard Susskind said information is not destroyed. The physicists came with the

solution called the ‘Holographic Principle’. It states that 3-dimensional objects fallen into a black

hole would be encoded on the surface of the black hole which is 2-dimensional, just like a

hologram. The object is still absorbed by the black hole but the image of the object is projected

on the event horizon, stuck there forever. Therefore information was safe. Hawking agreed with

this and the battle was won by the physicists. This also made more sense because black hole

grew in size as it ate more mass. The surface area of the event horizon grew as more mass was

inserted, meaning that there was more space for information to be encoded in. As the black hole

evaporates the positive particle has a chance of learning the information and carrying it away.
Information would be safe if the ‘Holographic Principle’ is true. We don’t have a proven answer,

but these solutions are most likely the correct answer to the information paradox.

In conclusion, black hole may be not interesting to learn about, but we still have to

consider them as very important objects. Solving the mysteries of black hole could help us

understand the universe that we live in since it has unique properties such as the singularity,

which breaks the laws of physics. Black holes are also very important to understand because it

could technically delete our universe. Informations which can’t be destroyed are lost at the black

hole, and if we don’t solve this paradox, we would have to redo physics. We still don’t know

much about them and that is why we need to do more research., Our future generations have to

be aware about black holes and solve it.

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