Prior to determining the essence of the issue of black holes, we should start by defining this phenomenon and introducing general notions that would be integral to the comprehension of the issue.
According to the article Black Holes published by NASA, “a black hole is anything but empty space”. So, why exactly is it called a black hole?
What is really a black hole?
A black hole looks like a supermassive perfect sphere, and an event horizon surrounds it.
The origin of the phenomenon has been established as the result of the star’s dying..
According to Don Nardo, Simon Pierre LaPlace was the first who predicted the existence of black holes in 1796.
Today, I will be speaking about the integral characteristics of a black hole, namely bending of time and space happening inside this sphere, and its swallowing anything that appears in its way.
First, we will talk about time bending that happens in a black hole.
Since 1960s, various theories and mathematical equations have been used to determine what is happening with time inside a black hole.
Prof. Afshar supposes that a black hole is known for the existence of the event horizon, a so-called “point of no return”.
Inside the event horizon, time and space change places.
Another explanation of time bending lies in the fact that the gravitational force of a black hole is enormous.
Scientists impose two major restrictions concerning the comprehension of time bending inside a black hole. In order to visualize and facilitate understanding of these restrictions, one has to imagine himself/herself inside a black hole, thus making time perception more subjective than objective.
In order to be able to remember something, it has to have happened farther from the center of the black hole than where you are.
If T is the time that it would take light to travel to you from the location of the event, then it happened either no more than T hours ago or T hours into the future.
Time bending properties of black holes has served as a basis for various suppositions and stipulations concerning time travel since scientists have proved that the gravitational force of a black hole really alters time.
There is an idea of using wormholes as time machines. For instance, physicist Lawrence M. Krauss in his book The Physics of Star Trek analyzes how writers of Star Trek depicted this phenomenon and concludes that they were correct.
The idea of exploiting wormholes as time machines is supported by mathematical formulas supposing that if one end of a hole is fixed and the other one is moving, each will end in a different time frame.
Speculations about time bending properties of a black hole serve as the basis of imagining various incredible situations that would be quite real inside the discussed object.
If you were in the center of a hole and looked away from the center, you would be able to see two images of everything – one from T hours in the past and one from T hours in the future.
Thus, if you and some prominent writer were inside a hole and situated from each other at a distance of 3 light years, you would be able to watch him/her start and finish his/her book at once.
Now that time bending properties of a black hole have been proved and exemplified, we will discuss the issue of space and what happens to it under the influence of the researched object. It seems appropriate to divide this section into two parts researching the impact on space near a black hole and inside it.
As NASA reports, black holes dramatically affect their surroundings by devouring stars, which is going to be discussed in the following section, emitting powerful gamma ray bursts, causing the growth of some stars in their vicinity, and altering the space in the neighborhood in unpredictable and often unexplainable ways.
Space inside a black star has been proved to be essentially altered, though the exact way it changes has not been yet agreed upon.
Some scientists suppose that the space inside a black hole may be viewed as the world upside down.
Einstein and Rosen offered an idea that black holes may be used as gateways to some other space dimensions or at least to far-away places in space. Thus, they did not reject the idea of the existence of space tunnels inside a hole, yet they did not claim to be sure of their lengths, sizes, or safety of travelling through them.
Unique space properties of a black hole have given birth to the hypothesis about the exotic material threading the wormhole that has a negative energy density. Thorne connected this hypothesis to Stephen Hawking’s discovery of exotic vacuum fluctuations near a hole’s horizon.
The horizon distorts the vacuum fluctuations making them different from the shapes that would have been expected from them on the Earth. The negative energy density is the logical outcome of these distortions, in the Thorne’s opinion.
Finally, let’s talk about the swallowing property of a black hole that has been scientifically proved and empirically observed by scientists for many years.
Giant black holes are supposed to be able to rip entire stars apart as if they are little toys.
As a rule, giant black holes are in the center of most galaxies and swallow a star once every 10,000 to 100,000 years.
Recently, astronomers have had a unique opportunity to witness the swallowing process when they spotted a star in another galaxy plunging toward a black hole and being ripped to shreds. In the process of being ripped, it sparked an extremely brilliant flare that was detected from a distance of 2.1 billion light-years.
This empirical observation has proved the immense capacity of black holes to swallow and rip apart stars of various sizes and brightness as well as has allowed to reconstruct the life story of the ruined star that has been compared to our sun.
In conclusion, a black hole is one of the most mysterious phenomena in the universe that has not been yet properly studied due to the limitations of contemporary technologies.
Kip Thorne supposes that “Of all conceptions of the human mind, from unicorns to gargoyles to the hydrogen bomb, the most fantastic, perhaps, is the black hole: a hole in space with a definite edge into which anything can fall and out of which nothing can escape, a hole with a gravitational force so strong that even light is caught and held in its grip, a hole that curves space and warps time”.
The idea that black holes manipulate space and time has amazed scientists and fiction writers for years, yet there is no 100 percent surety in the credibility of any offered theory as they remain theoretical musings not supported by bullet-proof evidence.
Moreover, matter paradoxes should be taken into consideration while devising hypotheses about space and time bending properties of a black hole.
It has been scientifically proved that black holes either rip apart or swallow any objects that come their way in space.
Since this is the biggest mystery in our universe, by discovering what happens inside of it, we will be able to answer many unanswered questions about the universe.
