What are Black Holes?

 Black Holes

If you are a lover of science fiction then you will be loving the concept of black holes because it is said that '..concepts are sometimes stranger than fiction..'

Let me start with the basic concept that Black holes are not actually 'Holes' but they are just celestial bodies with infinite density.

Formation of Black Holes

For this, we should understand that a black hole is formed usually when a big star collapses onto itself under the influence of its own gravity. Yes, it seems a bit fuzzy but it is a concept of great visualization.

I hope you know about the structure of a star which is composed of a dense core, outer crust and a lot of Hydrogen fuel. The core of the star which is extremely dense and is located at the center pulls the outer cover of the star towards its center which is balanced by the counter energy produced by the chemical fusion between hydrogen atoms to form Helium. In this reaction, some amount of mass is destroyed and converted into a tremendous amount of energy.

For millions of years, this equilibrium is maintained but when the level of nuclear fuel gets low the energy released by the reactions is not able to counter the gravity and the mass of star collapses into its core(some amount of mass is thrown out). This creates a region of very less volume but with tremendous mass ( region of very high density). Either it can be a 'Neutron Star' but if the region is about very small as compared to its mass the density becomes infinite and it is called a 'Black Hole'.
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