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Phil Plait's Ten Things You Didn T Know About Black Holes?

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When the general public hears that there is a black hole at the center of the milky way, the impulse reaction is to either not believe it, or think of it as a destructive force that will be the end of the galaxy. But the question that needs to be asked is ‘why?’. “Why” is the most important question humanity can ask to start the search for answers. Answers that not only better human understanding, but also lead to ideas that can accelerate progression in technology. When information about black holes is presented in such a destructive way, it makes the information about them inapproachable. In general, humanity does not like to hear about things that can kill or destroy. But this presentation of information does not provide the safety and creativity …show more content…

The most generally accepted theory about black holes is supported by Einstein’s theory of relativity. This suggests a singularity at a given point that all matter will go to, but this does not explain all of a black hole and its behavior. There are specific behaviors that do not align with the prediction that a singularity would provide scientists with. Phil plait in his article entitled “Ten Things You Didn't Know About Black Holes”, explains how in order for a gravitational pull to be strong enough for light not to escape, a lot of mass is needed. Yet the point of singularity is theorized to have myriad of mass into one point in space, taking into account that density is equal to mass divided by volume. The density could very well be close to infinity which doesn't agree with what is normally found in nature. Yet, black holes are far from normal. Even more bizarre, is that black holes can decrease in density. Phil Plait again describes how when you double the mass of a black hole or when two black holes collide, there should only be a small increase in the radius of the event horizon (the space in which the gravity is too strong for anything to escape). This is due to the fact that the volume of the sphere is based upon the cube root of the radius, rather than directly correlating with the radii size. But, when this event is observed, the event horizon radius is doubled. Not correlating with the general assumption of two masses colliding, the only reason that can currently explain the situation is a decrease in density. Which is hard to understand because when the density decreases, normally gravitational pull will decrease as well, but this contradicts observation on a gravitational “being” increasing in size (Plait). Its is

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