8/24/07

Black Holes and Wormholes Part 2: The Black Hole

After that big discussion on gravity, you are now ready to hear about black holes. As I said before, mass causes a "dent" in the fabric of space-time. This can be illustrated by this picture:
Any mass in the universe has this effect on the fabric of space-time. The greater the mass, the steeper the slant of the "walls". A black hole, though, is differant. It creates an infinite "tunnel" through space. There is no "bottom" to the "pit". Look at this pic:
As you can see, there is no bottom. As you can probably imagine, this creates a problem in physics. The straightest path through space in a black hole goes into nowhere. With normal object, the path either leads to a collision of the two objects, or an orbiting path. In a black hole, though, most paths lead into nothing. There is the small chance you can orbit, but where does everything else go? Please ask questions, because I have much more info that I can't quite figure out how to integrate. I will be posting more on this; I'm not done yet! ;-) There will be at least a part three!

4 comments:

Peacefinger said...

Confusing, but interesting. I read and article ago in one of my science magazines about black holes,but I've forgotten most of it now. Thanks for the info, it's fun. Maybe I could show you the article sometime?

madscientist said...

That'd be Sweet! I love reading anything about astrophysics, and especially black holes!

Sola Gratia said...

Yeah, that was Popular Science. They hypothesized that interstellar travel might theoretically be possible by "bending space time." Is that similar to what a black hole does? Or a wormhole? Do you think humans could do it?

madscientist said...

Yes it is similar, yes, I think it is possible, but i don't have time to explain much right now...life is busy...so busy...