What are Black Holes? - Explained!

Hello Guys! Welcome back to KidsCast! We are here back with an amazing article named What are Black Holes? An amazing nature piece that is still in the research and fascinates all space lovers. Get ready to read this piece of KidsCast!

What are Black Holes?

So first, the most basic question that arises from the title itself is 'What are Black Holes?' So, Black holes are a part of space where the gravitational pull is so strong that even light that travels at a tremendous speed can't escape from it. That's the reason why we can't see black holes in our sky because as you saw light is also trapped in black holes.

How are Black Holes formed?

Now, this is important to know how are black holes formed. Most black holes are formed from the remnants of a large star that dies in a supernova explosion. If the total mass of the star's core is large enough that is about 3 times of our sun, it can be proven that the force of gravity becomes the most powerful force. However, as the star dies, an extraordinary thing takes place. As the surface of the star nears an imaginary surface called the 'event horizon' time on the star slows relative to the time kept by observers far away. When the surface reaches the event horizon, time stands still, and the star can collapse no more - it is a frozen collapsing object. The black holes are extremely dense as if a lot of matter is squeezed and packed into London! 

Types of Black Hole:-

So, there are two types of black holes according to size - 

a) Stellar Mass Black Holes - These are giant black holes that are approximately 3 dozen sizes of Sun. These are spread out all over our galaxy 'Milky Way'.

b) Supermassive Monster Black Holes- As the name suggests itself, these black holes are supermassive black holes that have an extremely large mass. These are found mostly in the centers of big galaxies including ours. In Milky Way, the supermassive monster's name is Sagittarius A*.

History of Black Holes:-

Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916, with his general theory of relativity. The term "black hole" was given many years later in 1967 by an American astronomer John Wheeler. The first black hole that was discovered was Cygnus X-1, located in the Milky Way in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. Astronomers saw the first signs of the black hole in 1964 when a sounding rocket detected celestial sources of X-rays according to NASA.

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Properties and its Structure:-

The black holes generally have no features. All black holes have 3 physical properties: mass, electric charge, and angular momentum. All the black holes that share the same properties are the same and cannot be distinguished. 

Massive Black Holes:-

So this is a list of some massive black holes in our universe:

• 1ES 2344+514
• Ton 618 
• 3C 371
• 4C +37.11 
• AP Lib
• S5 0014+81 
• APM 08279+5255 
• Arp 220
• Centaurus A

So, Kids, this was all for this article. We hope that you learned enough about black holes and enjoyed reading about these massive and giant creatures in our universe which are so powerful that even light cant escape through them. We will return back with amazing posts after this so get geared up for those! Till the time, Bye! Happy Learning!