• Question: What happens inside black holes?

    Asked by adensepiggallopinginthefi to Deborah, Euan, Maheen, Rob, Stu on 13 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by the entertainernator, science beast.
    • Photo: Deborah Prunty

      Deborah Prunty answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      No one knows for sure. Black holes and point of gravity so intense that it pulls everything towards it. The pull is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light. Lots of people think that everything that goes into a blackhole is crushed by the gravity acting on it.

    • Photo: Euan Allen

      Euan Allen answered on 19 Jun 2016:

      Hi adensepiggallopinginthefi,

      Deborah is absolutely right, and we have no idea what happens inside a black hole. The problem with black holes is that they are so heavy, and contain so much gravity, that even light gets trapped by its gravitational pull if it goes too close. This is why they are called black holes, because they appear black due to them trapping all the light within a certain area. The edge of the area where light gets trapped is called the “event horizon” or the “Schwarzschild radius”.

      Because of this effect it makes it very difficult, maybe even impossible, to see into the black hole to see what is going on.

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