Written by: Nitika Kapali - 30026, Grade IV
Posted on: 16 June, 2021
At the centre of most galaxies, there is one of the strangest and deadliest things: a black hole. It is a region of space from which nothing can escape. Most black holes, regardless of their size, are born when a giant star runs out of energy. The star implodes, and its centre collapses under its weight. It can even swallow entire stars. Nothing can move fast enough to escape a black hole’s gravity. This includes light, the fastest thing in the universe. That’s why we can not see black holes in space—they have gobbled up all the light. Though astronomers can not see black holes, they can tell how the strong gravity affects the stars and the gases around the black hole. There are two types of black holes: “Stellar” and “Supermassive”. Supermassive black holes are the largest type of black hole. The most common type of black hole is “stellar”. Its mass can be up to 20 times more than the mass of the Sun. There may be many stellar masses. The intense gravity near a black hole makes time behave in strange ways.
