The Mystery Of Black Holes

What are black holes?

Black holes - a mystery that was only solved recently. They're dense points of infinite gravity, which unapologetically defy the laws of physics as they distort everything, every object, even if its massless, that comes near its event horizon. They hide in the shadow of space, lost in the incessant nature of the universe; the only property that distinguishes a black hole from blank space is the light visible around the black hole, which is pulled back in by the black hole's gravity and then reflected off it again.

They are formed from stars much bigger than the sun. When these stars explode and collapse on themselves into a supernova, a black hole is born.

Due to the fact that the stars mass compresses into a very small area which is the black hole, the gravitational pull of the black holes in so strong that not even light can get away from them. Since light can't get away, black holes themselves don't emit any light and are therefore, black! The event horizon is a region in black holes from which no light can escape. Black holes are so dense that, a black hole the same mass as the earth, would only be 1 cm in radius!

Even though they are all black holes, they're not all the same. So far, three types of black holes have been discovered. When the largest stars collapse in on themselves, they make way for the formation of stellar-mass black holes. Smaller than their predecessors, supermassive blackholes are still enormous in size and you can find them at the centre of many galaxies - they are millions or even billions of times the mass of our Sun. Even though evidence for these two kinds of black holes have been found, the third ones, intermediate mass holes, remain a mystery.

Past the event horizon

For an object to fall into the singularity of the black hole - the centre - it must cross the invincible boundary of the event horizon - where matter can only move inward. Unsurprisingly, nothing can travel faster than or even at the speed of light. Since light can't escape once its past the event horizon, nothing else can either.

But this raises the question, if an observer will witness time stopping as someone enters or 'falls' into a black hole, what would the person that's falling witness around the universe as they're falling in? Surely, it has to be the opposite of what the observer is viewing. So, what is it? Start of a time? What does that insinuate? The person would accelerate towards the black hole and 'crush' into it - the singularity of a black hole. This could mean many things, perhaps, even the person that is falling in might be entering a new universe - A new era...

Or it could just mean, that they're crushed and die.

It wouldn't be wrong to say that once you're past the event horizon - the boundary - you won't be able to get out of the black hole. You cannot get out even if you accelerate away from it in every possible direction. When you're far away from a blackhole, its gravity is indistinguishable.

'when you fall into a black hole, resistance really is futile'.

A Possible Escape to Another side?

A current theory describes that black holes might lead to the end of time - if something falls into a blackhole, an observer viewing from far away won't be able to see it fall, they will slow down and stop from the observer's point of view as they get closer and closer. As said before, light cannot escape the gravitational pull inside black holes. This indicates that for something to move freely in a black hole and maybe even escape it, it would need to travel faster than the speed of light, which currently, is not possible. So, for now, it isn't possible to enter a black hole and find out what lies on the other side. That does not however suggest that it won't change in the future...