Black Hole

Picture Obtained from Astronomy Picture of the Day

          This picture was obtained from astronomy picture of the day. It was from February 24^th 2004. It shows that a black hole is able to rip up a star. Black holes are stellar remnants that are above three solar masses. A black hole is formed because the neutron degeneracy pressure that would keep a neutron star a star is overcome and therefore, the star is able to collapse and become very dense. A black hole is composed of a singularity where all the mass is held and then there is the event horizon which is the boundary of the black hole. Once an object passes the event horizon it cannot escape. The black hole has so much gravity that an object has to excess the speed of light. This means that light cannot escape it.  If there is material near a black hole it can be pulled into the hole. In this picture the giant black hole  pulls on the front of a closely passing star much more strongly than the back. This is explained by general relativity.  This strong tidal force would stretch out a star and likely cause some of the star’s gasses to fall into the black hole.  This infalling gas emits x-rays when the gases are heated when they are compressed from falling into the hole. The picture above is an artist’s illustration of the sequence of destruction of the star by the black hole. When the star is destroyed most of the stellar remains would be flung out into the galaxy. This aspect of the destruction does not make sense to me. I would think that the material would spiral into the black home because the star is close enough to the hole and the gravity is large enough to rip the star apart.  However, these event are rare and occur only once every  10000 years the black holes are located at the center of galaxies.  Even though I am not sure about all the processes that are going on but I know that black holes are very powerful aspects of the universe.