I was surprised when I learned that black holes can move around the universe. I had always assumed they were stationary objects that spent their time sucking in everything around them. After I gathered a little more information on black holes it made logical sense that they could move. It was also a scary, albeit unlikely realization that one could travel to our galaxy and turn suck our planet into oblivion.

What is a black hole?

The existence of black holes was first predicted (not proven) after Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. A black hole is a concentration of mass that creates a gravitational pull so immense that light itself cannot escape. A black hole starts as a star that is at minimum, three times the size of our sun. Two forces are at work insides stars, nuclear fusion and gravitation. At the end of a stars life nuclear fusion can no longer overcome the forces of gravitation and the atoms that make up the star begin to compress. A star that was once millions of miles across can generate a gravitational attraction so intense that the neutrons within are literally crushed out of existence and reduced to a massively dense speck of matter no bigger than the size of a pinhead.

What! They can move?

Yes, they can. They are infinitely dense specs of matter that can move just like any other object in our universe. Although the gravitational pull they produce cause the laws of physics to seemingly be broken within the black hole, outside the laws are the same. Mass attracts mass, matter has mass. It it basic Newtonian physics that support the movement of black holes.

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Filed under: F.Y.I.