BLACK HOLES: THE GENESIS
What is the concept of Black Holes?
A black hole is a volume of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it. Karl Schwarzschild solved Einstein’s equations for the case of a black hole, which he envisioned as a spherical volume of warped space surrounding a concentrated mass and completely invisible to the outside world. Anyway, it is supposed that if the Sun were somehow collapsed to form a black hole, the orbital motion of the planets would be unaffected.
How are they formed?
The most common black holes are probably formed by the collapse of massive stars. Larger black holes are thought to be formed by the sudden collapse or gradual accretion of the mass of millions or billions of stars. Most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, probably contain such supermassive black holes at their centers.
While black holes strongly influence the space immediately around them, the notion that they behave like cosmic vacuum cleaners, sweeping up everything in the neighborhood, is a popular fallacy.
What are the Types of Black Holes?
There are three types: stellar black holes, supermassive black holes and intermediate black holes.
- Stellar black holes
- Super massive black holes
- Intermediate black holes
1. Stellar black holes — small but deadly
When a star burns through the last of its fuel, it may collapse, or fall into itself. For smaller stars, up to about three times the sun's mass, the new core will be a neutron star or a white dwarf. But when a larger star collapses, it continues to compress and creates a stellar black hole.
2. Supermassive black holes — the birth of giants
Small black holes populate the universe, but their cousins, supermassive black holes, dominate. Supermassive black holes are millions or even billions of times as massive as the sun, but have a radius similar to that of Earth's closest star. Such black holes are thought to lie at the center of pretty much every galaxy, including the Milky Way.
3. Intermediate black holes – stuck in the middle
Scientists once thought black holes came in only small and large sizes, but recent research has revealed the possibility for the existence of mid-size, or intermediate, black holes (IMBHs). Such bodies could form when stars in a cluster collide in a chain reaction.