OUR black hole. Part I
Get the idea? Go inside the black hole and you have a certain perception of "reality" which does not differ too much from ordinary. Go outside and your perception of the inside reality is quite different. Same situation, different laws depending on where you are situated. This is what "relativity" stands for in Einstein's brainchild.
The process outlined above is admittedly a highly simplified one, for matter does not yield to overcrowding without a fight. When matter accumulates, it must get rid of the energy which was keeping it apart in the first place, overcoming gravitational attraction which was ever present.
This gravitational energy as it is called, is released as heat, which given appropriate conditions of temperature, pressure and composition (ie. chemical elements present), give rise in turn to varied forms of nuclear interactions and decay complicating the process.
Nonetheless this perturbations do not change the overall situation, they simply power a host of spectacular phenomena as novas, supernovas, hypernovas, etc.
Black holes come in sizes. How can you measure a black hole? Remember you need to accumulate a minimum amount of matter to cross the black hole threshold. Nothing prevents you from pouring more matter inside (it happens in nature) and let it grow.
You can measure the mass of a black hole - you measure its gravitational tug on neighbor stars for example, by measuring their orbital motions - and you may measure its spatial extent. You may wonder how comes measuring extent of such strange thing. It is basically a matter of convention. The conventional size of a black hole is that of a sphere whose radius is the threshold distance where light stops moving.
This distance is the Scwarzchild radius and defines a surface known as the Event Horizon. So called because no event beyond this horizon, towards the black hole's interior, can be seen from outside. No information can be retrieved from within the Event Horizon boundary.
You may wonder how comes stars up to 56 solar masses strong (more than an order of magnitude heavier than the threshold mass) do not become black holes in a blink. They do not readily collapse because of the aforementioned real world complications. Nuclear burning exerts an enormous radiation pressure counteracting gravity. In fact this pressure is so high stars cannot grow larger than that without coming apart.
When they exhaust their fuel supply and
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