What Is A Black Hole: 7 Truly Amazing Facts

Imagine a place where all matter is squeezed in so tight that nothing at all can escape. Planets, moons even light in fact nothing at all! The gravitational force is so large that anything coming even remotely close to it is sucked in, this, in essence, defines a black hole. But how did they come to be? Check out these 7 facts below about these amazing objects.

1. X-ray astronomy discovered the very first black hole.

The very first black hole ever discovered named Cygnus X-1 was discovered way back in the 1960s, but it wasn’t actually identified as a black hole for at least another decade. NASA state that Cygnus X-1 is around 10 times bigger than our sun,  a nearby giant star which is around 20 times bigger than our sun is bleeding due to the massive X-ray emission coming from the black hole.

2.  What does a black hole look like?

A black hole is ‘black’ meaning no light can escape from it, this means it is impossible to see or sense a black hole using any of our instruments. The key (according to NASA), to actually see a black hole is to study the effects it has on its environment. Passing stars are ripped to shreds by the black hole due to the massive pull on them, when this happens the matter from the star gets brighter and hotter, glowing in X-rays.

3. How big is a black hole?

NASA says that there are at least three types of black hole ranging from ‘relative squeakers’ to black holes that dominate an entire galaxy. The smallest black holes are called Primordial ranging from the size of 1 atom to the size of a mountain, the most common black holes are Stellar black holes and can be up to 20 times the size of our sun – there are dozens of them in the Milky Way. Supermassive Black Holes are the really big ones at the centres of galaxies, more than 1 million times bigger than the sun.