Cosmic Quicksand essays

Cosmic Quicksand essays A voracious swirling orifice lies in the center of every galaxy, even our own Milky Way. Anything that crosses over into its event horizon will be ripped to pieces. Some of these pieces are swallowed up, while others are propelled into the universe at one half the speed of light. Despite these grim facts, Black Holes are much less menacing than they seem. Although objects that cross over into the event horizon (the mouth of the Black Hole) are lost forever, Black holes also contribute energy and star-making gas and dust to the galaxy that surrounds it. Everything emitted from a Black Hole provides valuable information about how our universe functions. Everything in the universe has a birth, a life, and a death. Just as people are said to live on through their children, a star also lives on in the form of a Black Hole. A Black Hole is created when a star dies. Te inward gravitational pull of the star becomes so great that it collapses into itself and turns into a void with zero mass. This void is called a Black Hole. A Black Hole is not a giant vacuum. Rather, it is an object of infinite density and gravity that bends the space and time around it. Time moves more slowly the closer it gets to the center. On the very edge of the event horizon, time actually stops! Black holes are not all alike. In fact, we now know of three distinct kinds of black holes; Supermassive, Mid-mass, and Stellar. Very little is known about Mid-mass Black Holes. However, there is an abundance of information on Supermassive and Stellar Black Holes. Supermassive Black Holes lie at the center of most galaxies. These Black Holes have masses of millions of suns and produce huge amounts of energy. Scientists are not sure how these Supermassive Black Holes form, but they have come up with two possible theories. One theory is that one Black Hole simply swallows material and continues to grow over millions of years. The other the...