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What are Black Holes ?

Black holes are points in space that are so dense they create deep gravity sinks. Beyond a certain region, not even light can escape the powerful tug of a black hole’s gravity. And anything that ventures too close—be it star, planet, or spacecraft—will be stretched and compressed like putty in a theoretical process aptly known as spaghettification.

Types of Black Holes

Black holes are categorized into four (4) types. The first is the supermassive black hole or SMBH. This is the largest type amounting to an unmeasurable amount of solar masses. This is usually found at the center of the largest galaxies in space. In our solar system, the SMBH is located at Sagittarius A*.

The third type, known as the stellar black hole or stellar mass black hole is formed when a massive star collapses. Their masses range from five (5) to a hundred (100) solar masses and can be observed as either a gamma ray burst or a hypernova explosion. These types of black holes are also called collapsars.

The second type is the intermediate mass black hole which is a hypothetical class with a mass ranging from a hundred (100) to a million (100000)solar masses. Although the existence of intermediate mass black holes has still yet to be proven, there is indirect evidence that they exist using various positions from known stars. We actually don’t know how they look but there is estimation that these are bigger than stellar black hole and smaller than supermassive black hole.

The last type is known as a micro black hole, a mini black hole, or a quantum mechanical black hole. They were introduced by Stephen Hawking in 1971.

Discovery of Black Hole

The first black hole ever discovered was Cygnus X-1, located within the Milky Way in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. Astronomers saw the first signs of the black hole in 1964 when a sounding rocket detected celestial sources of X-rays according to NASA. In 1971, astronomers determined that the X-rays were coming from a bright blue star orbiting a strange dark object. It was suggested that the detected X-rays were a result of stellar material being stripped away from the bright star and “gobbled” up by the dark object — an all-consuming black hole.

Closest Black Hole to Earth

The closest black hole to Earth is dubbed “The Unicorn” and is situated approximately 1,500 light-years away. The nickname has a double meaning. Not only does the black hole candidate reside in the constellation Monoceros (“the unicorn”), its incredibly low mass — about three times that of the sun — makes it nearly one of a kind.