• Question: What is a black hole made of?

    Asked by raj2004 to Anna, James, Joe, Leonie, Olivia on 16 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Olivia Lynes

      Olivia Lynes answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      I’m learning loads about space with these questions!

      So a black hole is defined as a region of space time which has a HUGE around of gravity, this prevents anything including light from escaping. If anything falls into the hole from the rest of the universe it pretty much sticks there.

      If we tried to look into the centre of a black hole, our understanding of physics doesn’t match what we would find due to the extreme gravity we would find there.

    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Hi Raj2004,

      The black hole is the remains of a star, now hoovering up all the matter around it, so I guess the black hole is made up of the star it once was and everything it has sucked into it.

    • Photo: Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes

      Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      As Olivia, I’m also learning a lot about space! I’d have liked to be of more help, but I can’t find what a black hole is made of

    • Photo: Joe Spencer

      Joe Spencer answered on 17 Mar 2015:

      A black hole is a singularity in space, the event horizon (the sucky bit) is made of nothing except a point dot of ridiculous density. it’s a hole in space with a massive gravity pull. The accretion disk, which is the spirally bit on the outside is made up of stars, and space dust and everything else that is being pulled into the hole.

      It’s all abit confusing and that’s why black holes are interesting, as if we want to find flaws with out understanding of physics, we’ll probably find them by looking at black holes. As Einstein says, the force of gravity comes about due to a bend / curve in space time, imagine you have a bed sheet pulled out flat and straight, that’s space time, now put a bowling ball in the middle, the bed sheet will bend if you put a marble on the edge of the sheet it’ll roll to the centre of the bed sheet. This is gravity, it’s objects moving down a hill formed in space time!”!””?””?

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