Many people believe nothing escapes a black hole. How does this change your opinion NOW? Will the above change the way scientists view and explore the universe?
131419
They don't "emerge" from a black hole, they are created by it's motion (rotation).  One of the claims of the General Theory of Relativity is that objects like black hole, and other massive, moving objects will created gravitational waves in the spacetime field, much like moving charges will create waves in the electromagnetic field.  Right now we can't detect these gravitational waves, but a number of projects are coming online that should be able to.\n\nThe one easy example of thes types of waves is this:  Imagine two pebbles rolling around each other in a shallow pool of water.  As the pebbles roll around each other they send off spiraling ripples in the water.  Masses that are moving is such a way are though to produce gravitational ripples in spacetime, much like the ripples you see in a shallow pool of water.\n\nThe analogy is harder with a single rotating object, but the equations of General Relativity predict that it too should radiate gravitational waves.\n\nIt really has been part of the theory of Black Holes from day one, it is just that were are finally aproaching a technlogical level where we may actually be able to detect them.
164010
As far as I know, there are only 2 real-life examples of such a process: the Big Bang and a black hole.\n\nThe Big Bang caused 'everything' to expand into 'nothing'. That in itself is an infinitely large expansion; it's like dividing infinity by 1.\n\nA black hole is, in essence, where matter collapses to zero size, thus reaching infinite density and creating a hole in space-time. Little is known about the interior of such black holes, or, indeed, if there is such a concept.
183957
Yea, entering a black hole might not be the smartest idea...unless you like being compacted into a space smaller than your fingernail.
369876
Studying black holes would be good if you're a graduate student at MIT but since you don't say what level you're at, it's really hard to answer your question.
22810
Recently, scientists are creating theories that saying there are more universes beyond our own. Until we learn to harnass the power of warpholes, black holes, etc. or send things traveling at the speed of light without damaging it, we may never know where space ends.
9171
Although black holes are not directly detectable, there is much indirect evidence of their existance such as the movement of other objects.\n\nGravity is not a simple phenomenon and cannot "escape" from anything. It is a property of space-time itself.
659428
you're thinking of a worm hole. a black hole will, as far as we know tear things apart to as it takes them to a different part of our universe, which doesnt make sense because nothing can escape from them. Anyway, a worm hole, which is theoretical -mostly- is like two black holes connected at their vertex's. think of the universe as a thin sheet of paper. one black hole is is on the right side, and another on the left. fold the piece of paper so that the black holes are lines up. instead of traveling from point A to point B, you just go through space in manner of speaking from point A to point B "just like that". there really isnt any just like that, but that's as best i can describe it with out actually showing you. sorry if this makes no sense.
398544
Black holes as mentioned above are a singularity.  Nobody really knows what happens once you cross the event horizon ( the edge of the black hole).  These are very strange events in that they pull everything including light towards them, which contradicts Newtons second law with mass being proportional inversely proportional to mass ( as light has no mass) and Einstein's theory of relativity and the conservation of mass and energy.  All theory we have breaks down when we encounter black holes.\n\nAn interesting theory is that black holes are a link to another universe, matter passing through a black hole and appearing through a white hole in another universe.  This theory has the assumption that there is more than one universe and that they are all linked.  Stephen Hawking's "A Brief history of time" gives many interesting insights.  \n\nHe has recently changed some of his views however with a new theory that a Universe is created by the bumping of one universe into another with black holes becoming the remanents of the reaction, and thus there is no begining or end to time.  He is publishing his ideas soon.  In short however nobody really knows what happens in a black hole.
165292
It is not a star going supernova that creates a blackhole. Its the collapsing of its core that does. Just wanted to clear that up.\n\nA blackhole is created when a star is so massive (at least 20 times that of our Sun) that the bonds between the atoms, or molecules, are no longer strong enough to fight against the force of gravity.  This causes the star to collapse in on itself, and eventualy create a blackhole.\n\nThere are some beliefs that a blackhole could lead to a parallel universe.  But this gets a bit hazy in details, as no one knows for sure, and its currently impossible to prove or disprove.  A blackhole has an "event horizon", that once you have passed through you cannot get back out, nor can you see past it from the outside.  Because of this event horizon, it is very unlikely that you could get out of the blackhole into another universe .....\n\nHowever ..... A theoretical astronomical body called a white hole has been predicted, although its existence has not yet been proved.  It is the opposite of a blackhole, in that instead of "sucking" up all the matter in its path, it spews it out instead.  IF this exists, then there is a chance that a white-black hole pair could be a gateway to another universe, or another part of our universe.  But I can't stress enough, this is purely theoretical, and absolutely NO proof has been found yet.
162775
We haven't actually had a black hole close enough to experiment with, at least not that we know about--although there are theories about dryers having a black hole that eats socks, see earlier response!!--so most of the work on black holes is done with theory, prediciting what a black hole might do, and then seeing if something out there is doing it.\n\nNow, the best data seems to be based on the orbital velocities of stars in galaxies: the velocity distributions demand a truly massive central mass in a lot of the galaxies, one that is best viewed as a black hole.\n\nSome very nice data exists with observations of events predicted to happen with "near misses" with black holes--particles that get into the titanic gravity well of the black hole, but decay into two particles, one escaping the black hole.\n\nBut no one has actually seen a black hole do anything, directly..
19
The current scientific theory holds that black holes are formed when stars of sufficient mass (about 3x the mass of our Sun) reach the end of their life and collapse down into a singularity, which is, in essence, an infinitely small point with a huge amount of gravity - gravity so powerful that not even light can escape it's pull if it gets too close. It is also thought that black holes can be formed from smaller masses if external energy/pressure is exerted to squeeze the mass into a singularity.\nNot sure if there's any direct experimental evidence of creation, but there is evidence that they exist. Cosmologists use several different methods to detect blacks holes, such as by looking for light being bent and/or disappearing as it travels from remote stars towards us, and also by looking for bursts of x-rays that are given off as matter is sucked into the back hole and destroyed.\nFun fact: current evidence and theory suggests that the center of the Milky Way is a giant black hole that was formed as the densly packed stars in the center collapsed and sucked each other in.
291138
The universal field theory is still being attempted. You see the field theory which governs large things like planets doesn't cover things which are small. By small we are talking molecular. You see when Hawking first realized that black holes aren't persistant and that they do burn out he realized that the particles within them must act differently that those of larger size (planets) and now he and some others are trying to prove a universal field theory that covers all of them. \n\nThat's about as simple as I can make it man without filling page after page.
78637
actually scientist have a lot of theoretical knowledge of black holes. \n\nYou would fall until you were at the center(in a finite amount of time from your frame of reference), at which point you would be compressed almost to nothing. An outside observer would still be able to see you though for a while and things would appear stretched.  try wikipedia's entry on black holes. http://answers.com/black_hole\n\nRepeat? Where's the original?
21627
By definition, something which cannot be detected does not exist (note: something that potentially COULD be detected, but hasn't been DOES exist; it just hasn't been detected).  For example, there can be large technological metropolis filled with aliens on a planet just inside of a black hole, but because we can never observe information from the hole, we say the city doesn't exist.  Same with the 'outside' of the universe.  If information can never enter the universe, than anything outside of the universe doesn't exist.  Such objects, the black hole city and the 'outside' of the universe, fall within the realm of metascience or philosophy.  However, just as we cannot prove they exist, we likewise cannot collect sufficient information to say that they don't, and it is this inability to test that makes it philosophy, not science.  PS: The black hole 'city' example was ridiculous, but it was more poetic than saying 'quantum particle' ;)
660697
its a MATHIMATICAL prediction that warmholes (or "shortcuts" in spacetime... so you fly into black hole and boom you're in another part of the universe or another universe all together) exists\n\nUnfortunatly this prediction bares no physical merrit as neither the black hole is capable of "letting things fall through" nor is a "whitehole" capable of existing for more then one instance (aside the fact that it cannot form, period)\n\nThe mathematical model is beautiful though, if you know much math I suggest you check it out.!
551146
Because it is only theoretical . And also, if one was ever discovered, the satellite would be sucked in and all the data would be lost. If scientists ever find a safe way to observe black holes, we will know much more.
91515
DARK energy and dark matter, two of the greatest mysteries confronting physicists, may be two sides of the same coin. A new and as yet undiscovered kind of star could explain both phenomena and, in turn, remove black holes from the lexicon of cosmology.\n\nThe audacious idea comes from George Chapline, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin of Stanford University and their colleagues. Last week at the 22nd Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting in Santa Barbara, California, Chapline suggested that the objects that till now have been thought of as black holes could in fact be dead stars that form as a result of an obscure quantum phenomenon. These stars could explain both dark energy and dark matter.\n\nThis radical suggestion would get round some fundamental problems posed by the existence of black holes. One such problem arises from the idea that once matter crosses a black hole's event horizon - the point beyond which not even light can escape - it will be destroyed by the space-time "singularity" at the centre of the black hole. Because information about the matter is lost forever, this conflicts with the laws of quantum mechanics, which state that information can never disappear from the universe.\n\nAnother problem is that light from an object falling into a black hole is stretched so dramatically by the immense gravity there that observers outside will see time freeze: the object will appear to sit at the event horizon for ever. This freezing of time also violates quantum mechanics. "People have been vaguely uncomfortable about these problems for a while, but they figured they'd get solved someday," says Chapline. "But that hasn't happened and I'm sure when historians look back, they'll wonder why people didn't question these contradictions."\n\n“People have been uneasy about these problems with black holes, but figured they'd get solved. That hasn't happened”While looking for ways to avoid these physical paradoxes, Chapline and Laughlin found some answers in an unrelated phenomenon: the bizarre behaviour of superconducting crystals as they go through something called "quantum critical phase transition" (New Scientist, 28 January, p 40). During this transition, the spin of the electrons in the crystals is predicted to fluctuate wildly, but this prediction is not borne out by observation. Instead, the fluctuations appear to slow down, and even become still, as if time itself has slowed down.\n\n"That was when we had our epiphany," Chapline says. He and Laughlin realised that if a quantum critical phase transition happened on the surface of a star, it would slow down time and the surface would behave just like a black hole's event horizon. Quantum mechanics would not be violated because in this scenario time would never freeze entirely. "We start with effects actually seen in the lab, which I think gives it more credibility than black holes," says Chapline.\n\nWith this idea in mind, they - along with Emil Mottola at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Pawel Mazur of the University of South Carolina in Columbia and colleagues - analysed the collapse of massive stars in a way that did not allow any violation of quantum mechanics. Sure enough, in place of black holes their analysis predicts a phase transition that creates a thin quantum critical shell. The size of this shell is determined by the star's mass and, crucially, does not contain a space-time singularity. Instead, the shell contains a vacuum, just like the energy-containing vacuum of free space. As the star's mass collapses through the shell, it is converted to energy that contributes to the energy of the vacuum.\n\nThe team's calculations show that the vacuum energy inside the shell has a powerful anti-gravity effect, just like the dark energy that appears to be causing the expansion o