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What is a black hole?

🔬 Science · updated 4 weeks ago · 2 min read
What is a black hole?
Short answerBlack holes are regions where gravity is so strong that once you cross the boundary, nothing can escape.

Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that once you cross the event horizon, escape is no longer possible. The object is real, but it is usually found by its effects on nearby matter rather than by seeing it directly.

Astronomers look for hot gas, x-rays, gravitational motion, and the behavior of stars around an invisible mass. That is how we know black holes are there.

The event horizon is the boundary people usually mean when they say ‘nothing can escape.’ It is the point where the physics gets extreme, not the point where the universe stops making sense.

Sources

NASA Science - Black Hole Basics
NASA Science - How Do We Know There Are Black Holes?

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