By The Wonderful and Amazing
Antonio R. and Ashley C.
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By The Wonderful and Amazing Antonio R. and Ashley C.
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What are the three major categories of black holes? * Super massive Black Holes These lie at the center the quasars and certain active galactic nuclei that appear to be exploding. Anything (such as stars together with gas, dust, and perhaps planets) can fall into the black hole and give off enormous amounts of energy. The Hubble Space Telescope (1994) provided valuable evidence that there is a super massive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy. It is only as big as the solar system, but this black hole had a mass equal to 2-3 billion stars. * Stellar Black Holes These form at the end of the life of a red giant star more than 3 times as large as the sun. Stars with less mass evolve into white dwarfs or neutron stars. When the star has no more atoms to fuse it collapses into a singularity, perhaps the size of a full stop. This is the black hole. Any light or photon passing within a few kilometers gets pulled in. This is called the event horizon the velocity required to escape from the exceeds the speed of light so that not even rays of light can escape into space. * Mini Black Holes Some scientists believe that these might have been formed during the big bang. They were proposed by Steven Hawking. Many tiny primordial black holes, each with the mass of an asteroid, might have been created. protons and antiprotons may be created very near a mini black hole. One of them may fall into the black hole while the other escapes so appearing to come out of the black hole. This effectively removes energy from the mini hole and it evaporates over time. |