The dark lord…

Sun. What is the first thing that pops in our head when we hear that name. Of course our sun which is a huge ball of burning fire. The sun is our only true God. Without Sun there would have been no life on earth. But have you ever imagined how sun would have possibly formed? Why it has so much energy? And after all, will it ever die?

We all know that sun is not the only thing which has a lot of energy, it’s just the only thing in our solar system with so massive energy. But outside our solar system things are a totally different level, there you will find stars which are million times larger than our Sun. But it’s not just the size of stars which fascinates us but their death cycle. It leads to the creation of black holes which has now become a bridge between whats science and fiction.

For us black holes are still very new. Mankind first felt the presence of a black hole in the year 1970 when a star accidentally went very close to a black hole and thus got pulled inside it, releasing tremendous amount of matter, light energy, quasars and electromagnetic waves. Before that black holes were just theoretical. But what makes black holes so special that everyone talks about them. You would have probably heard about them before, as giant vacuum cleaner in space whose gravitational forces are so strong that not even light can escape through it. Well that’s the truth but that’s not the only thing!

Black holes are the death results of a star. It’s a stage in the life of a star when all of its hydrogen fuels run out and there is no pressure outside the star to keep it in its shape instead there is a lot of inward push which compressors it to an infinite point of singularity. And that’s how a black hole is formed. Theory of relativity tells us a lot of crazy things about black holes, some black holes have masses equal to 10 to 15 times and in some cases even 100 to 1000 times the mass of our Sun so there compressed form is a point of infinite density, which literally means at the event horizon of a black hole time would stop!(Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us how space and time are interrelated and none of them can be altered without changing the former, so when there’s a massive object in space it causes massive distortions in time).

But to play with the time, you don’t need to go that close to the black hole. Even if you are within a certain safe limit, time will run slower for you there as compared to that on earth. But doesn’t that solve our time travel problem? The answer is obviously no, well there are several reasons for it:

• The only known black hole in our galaxy is very very far from our Earth, it’s literally impossible for us right now to travel such a long distance.
• Even if you go near a very safe limit from black hole where you can feel a time difference, the force difference between your head and your legs will be quite significant. It’s the same feeling when you lift a very heavy load let’s say 10 kilograms with your hand, imagine living like that for the rest of your life. That’s what it would be like.

At at the centre of our galaxy is a very active black hole named Sagittarius A which is 4 million times the mass of sun! If you ever look to a picture of our Milky way galaxy you will see a bright spot at the centre, it’s the Sagittarius. But wait black holes are invisible they cannot be seen because light cannot escape there gravity then how can such a thing glow so brightly? Well the answer is quasars. They are a totally different topic to discuss.

What happens to us when we go near a black hole to a point of no return(such space around black hole is called the event horizon)? For us it will be no different, definitely we will die but before few milliseconds of our death we will experience universe like never before things will happen at a totally different level, you will be squeezed like a very thin noodle (this process is referred to as spaghettiphication). But what’s more interesting is is how someone will see us from outside a black hole. For that person it will take forever to see us whirling inside a Black hole. For a very short period of time we will be still and slowly we will fade away (remember how light cannot escape black holes gravity).

Inside a Black hole you are in a state of lowest entropy. All of your information, that is, your structure, your chemical composition, your design, your looks, everything will be destroyed. It is said that the only thing that black hole remembers about you is your total mass, angular momentum and electric charge.

Can black hole ever die? The answer can be yes, but it requires certain conditions, firstly black hole remains active until it gets matter and energy from different resources and when there’s no energy and matter around it, it just stops its process and goes into a dormant state. In this state it radiates energy in the form of electromagnetic radiations, which is now betterly known as the Hawking’s radiation. Which implies that, given a lot of time, black holes can slowly vapourise (of course that will take an infinite amount of time).

Black holes have always been a very fascinating part of our universe. There is just so much to know about them that scientists are still struggling to know the basics. Who knows what facts does the black hole holds and how it will affect our future? Will it ever be able to help us travel in time? Or will our galaxy and our solar system will eventually die due to a black hole collision?