Black Holes – The Point of No Return

Growing up, I have been exposed to the stories of different urban myths and other queer stuffs. Some of those stories include: aliens, area 51, secret societies, religion, pyramids of Egypt, ghosts, the afterlife, Houdini, black holes, etc. Black holes were one of my favorite topics and I literally wanted to face a black hole.

As a child, it was fascinating for me to know and talk stuffs about this with my family. Some may think it was a crazy thing to do or that we are actually nuts, but for me, the experience was simply delightful especially when different members of my family started to contradict each other and make a fuss out of it.  Never the less, it was entertaining to know that something or someone out there is a mystery.

Good thing, we now have Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel (to name a few) which have all the money and other resources needed to be able to conduct studies and/or interview the right people to get the correct information on different stuffs like black holes. Aside from that, let us not forget the internet.  It surely can provide some good stuffs too.

What is a black hole?

In verbatim, based on an a Wikipedia article, it is a region of space-time, (space-time is a mathematical model which combines both time and space into a single theory or model explains variation as involving gradual quantitative transitions within abrupt changes), from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping.

The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform space-time to form a black hole.  There is also what they call the point of no return with regards to anything about a black hole.  The event horizon which has the mathematically defined surface marks the point of no return. Certainly, black has been the word used to describe this hole because it simply absorbs all the light that hits the horizon, thus, reflecting nothing at all. It seems to be just like a perfect black body or something in thermodynamics.