Imagine traveling through space and instantly becoming entrapped in nothing and having no chance to escape. How could this be? This must be a dream. What is this phenomenon? While human space travel is not even close to traveling to the outer dimensions of space, hopefully one day mankind will be able to. When that happens, one can only hope they never see the headline, Astronaut’s Life Taken by a Black Hole on the 5 O’Clock news. The possibilities for intergalactic space travel are endless. However, like pirates are to the ocean, black holes are to space. They both come out of nowhere and take control of the boat or spaceship, but the only difference is once a black hole takes control of the ship, it is never coming back.
Black holes can appear anywhere in the universe. They begin as gigantic stars, as if our sun was an ant and this star was an elephant. Ultimately a star’s life must come to an end just like any human. The life of a star is filled with constant battling between the inward pressure of gravity and the outward pressure of heat, thus staying a star is a struggle (that somehow lasts millions of years). Once there is no more hydrogen to burn the star caves in slowly due to the inward gravity, after a period of time, the matter of the star becomes very very very compressed, into an EXTREMELY dense solid/hole. Sometimes the gravity exerted on this mass becomes so great that not even light cannot pass through it, and thus a black hole is born. How ironic, at one point in time, the matter was a star that emitted light for all the galaxies to see and now it traps light from existing ever again.
It is time to imagine this hole here on Earth. Think about water swirling quickly down a drain, multiply the speed at which the water is pulled down by at least a billion, and the feeling of being sucked into a black hole is imagined. Hold that thought, and visualize the Pacific Ocean, the size of it, and the depth of it, now enlarge this visualization to as big as imaginable, but don’t forget this object blends in with almost everything else that can be seen. That’s what being in a black hole feels like. Hopefully no one will be stuck in one anytime soon. Not even Atlas could pull someone out.
Next question, how can a black hole be spotted? The answer is simple, just go outside in the middle of the night look up at the sky, look to the left of the moon and count five thumbnails away. Just kidding. Seeing a black hole is impossible but detecting where they are is possible because of the gravitational pull on surrounding stars.
Black holes are a phenomenon that will be never be fully explained until someone has experienced being in one of them. Until then our imagination will do, unless of course someone gets kidnapped by aliens who happen to live in black holes and is dropped off on Earth a few days later. Science is eternal and future technologies will be limitless, I can only wish I will see these things in my lifetime. Always remember when visiting space, watch out, it is possible to be trapped in nothing.
