Black holes

1. Black holes are some of the strangest and most

fascinating objects in space. They're extremely
dense, with such strong gravitational attraction that
not even light can escape their grasp.

2. The Milky Way could contain over 100 million black

holes, though detecting these gluttonous beasts is
very difficult. At the heart of the Milky Way lies a
supermassive black hole — Sagittarius A*. The
colossal structure is about 4 million times the mass
of the sun and lies approximately 26,000 light-years
away from Earth, according to a statement from
NASA.

3. The first image of a black hole was captured in 2019

by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration.
The striking photo of the black hole at the center of
the M87 galaxy 55 million light-years from Earth
thrilled scientists around the world.
How do black holes form?

Black holes are expected to form via two distinct

channels. According to the first pathway, they are stellar
corpses, so they form when massive stars die. Stars
whose birth masses are above roughly 8 to 10 times
mass of our sun, when they exhaust all their fuel — their
hydrogen — they explode and die leaving behind a very
compact dense object, a black hole. The resulting black
hole that is left behind is referred to as a stellar mass
black hole and its mass is of the order of a few times the
mass of the sun.

Not all stars leave behind black holes, stars with lower
birth masses leave behind a neutron star or a white
dwarf. Another way that black holes form is from the
direct collapse of gas, a process that is expected to result
in more massive black holes with a mass ranging from
1000 times the mass of the sun up to even 100,000 times
the mass of the sun. This channel circumvents the
formation of the traditional star, and is believed to
operate in the early universe and produce more massive
black hole seeds.

Who discovered black holes?

Black holes were predicted as an exact mathematical

solution to Einstein's equations. Einstein's equations
describe the shape of space around matter. The theory of
general relativity connects the geometry or shape of
shape to the detailed distribution of matter.

The black hole solution was found was by Karl

Schwarzschild in 1915, and these regions — black holes
— were found to distort space extremally and generate a
puncture in the fabric of spacetime. It was unclear at the
time if these corresponded to real objects in the universe.
Over time, as other end products of stellar death were
detected, namely, neutron stars seen as pulsars it
became clear that black holes were real and ought to
exist. The first detected black hole was Cygnus-X1.

The Schwarzschild metric

The Schwarzschild metric is the equation that
describes the geometry of spacetime around a non-
rotating, uncharged black hole. It is a solution to
Einstein's field equations, which are the fundamental
equations of general relativity.

Black hole equations =ds^2 = -(1 - 2GM/r)dt^2 + (1 -

2GM/r)^(-1)dr^2 + r^2dθ^2 + r^2sin^2θdφ^2

 ds^2 is the infinitesimal interval between two

spacetime points.
 G is the gravitational constant.
 M is the mass of the black hole.
 r is the radial coordinate.
  t is the time coordinate.
 θ and φ are the angular coordinates.

This equation describes the curvature of spacetime

around the black hole. The term 2GM/r represents the
gravitational potential of the black hole. When r equals
the Schwarzschild radius (the radius of the event
horizon), this term becomes equal to 1, and the metric
becomes singular, indicating the breakdown of the
coordinate system.

Note: This is a simplified form of the equation. The actual

equation can be more complex, depending on the specific
properties of the black hole, such as rotation or charge.

Structure of a black hole

The structure of a black hole is generally described
by two main components:

1. Event Horizon: This is the boundary between the

black hole and the rest of the universe. Nothing, not
even light, can escape from within the event horizon.
The radius of the event horizon is known as the
Schwarzschild radius, which depends on the mass of
the black hole.
2. Singularity: This is the point at the center of the
black hole where gravity becomes infinitely strong
and the laws of physics as we know them break
 down. It is often thought of as a point of infinite
density.

While this is a simplified model, more complex

black holes can have additional features:

 Accretion Disk: This is a disk of matter that orbits

the black hole and is gradually pulled inward by its
gravity. As the matter falls towards the event
horizon, it heats up and emits radiation.
 Jets: Some black holes can produce powerful jets of
high-energy particles that are ejected from their
poles. These jets are thought to be powered by the
energy released as matter falls into the black hole.

It's important to note that our understanding of

the interior of black holes is limited. Due to the
nature of the event horizon, it is impossible to directly
observe what lies within. However, theoretical models
and observations of black holes in the universe provide
valuable insights into their structure and behavior.

Black hole and its part :

Fuctions and parts
 The Varieties of Black Holes
Black holes come in three categories:

 Stellar Mass Black Holes are born from the death of stars

much more massive than the Sun. When some of these

stars run out of the nuclear fuel that makes them shine,

their cores collapse into black holes under their own

gravity. Other stellar mass black holes form from the

collision of neutron stars, such as the ones first detected

by LIGO and Virgo in 2017. These are probably the most

common black holes in the cosmos, but are hard to detect

unless they have an ordinary star for a companion. When

that happens, the black hole can strip material from the

star, causing the gas to heat up and glow brightly in X-rays.

 Supermassive Black Holes are the monsters of the

universe, living at the centers of nearly every galaxy. They

 range in mass from 100,000 to billions of times the mass of

the Sun, far too massive to be born from a single star. The

Milky Way’s black hole is about 4 million times the Sun’s

mass, putting it in the middle of the pack. In the form of

quasars and other “active” galaxies, these black holes can

shine brightly enough to be seen from billions of light-

years away. Understanding when these black holes formed

and how they grow is a major area of research. Center for

Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian scientists are part of

the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, which

captured the first-ever image of the black hole: the

supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87.

 Intermediate Mass Black Holes are the most mysterious,

since we’ve hardly seen any of them yet. They weigh 100

to 10,000 times the mass of the Sun, putting them

between stellar and supermassive black holes. We don’t

know exactly how many of these are, and like

supermassive black holes, we don’t fully understand how

 they’re born or grow. However, studying them could tell

us a lot about how the most supermassive black holes

came to be.

Hawking radiation

Quantum mechanically, black holes radiate, with a radiation

known as Hawking radiation, after the British physicist
Stephen Hawking who first proposed it.

The animation at top left cartoons the Hawking radiation from

a black hole of the size shown at bottom left. The blobs are
supposed to be individual photons. Notice, first, that the
photons have ‘sizes’ (wavelengths) comparable to the size of
the black hole, and, second, that the Hawking radiation is not
very bright — the black hole emits roughly one photon every
light crossing time of the black hole. So a black hole observed
by its Hawking radiation looks fuzzy, a quantum mechanical
object.

This is one animation that I did not compute mathematically.

How do you draw a quantum mechanical object, whose
appearance depends not only on the object but also on the way
the observer chooses to observe it? I figured my impressionism
was good enough here.

temperature TT given
Hawking radiation has a blackbody (Planck) spectrum with a

bykT=ℏg2πc=ℏc4πrs ,kT=ℏg2πc=ℏc4πrs ,where kk is

Boltzmann’s constant, ℏ=h/(2π)ℏ=h/(2π) is Planck’s
constant divided by 2π2π, and g=GM/r2sg=GM/rs2 is the
surface gravity at the horizon, the Schwarzschild radius rsrs,
of the black hole of mass MM. Numerically, the Hawking
temperature is T=4×10−20gKelvinT=4×10−20gKelvin if
the gravitational acceleration g is measured in Earth gravities
(gees).

The Hawking luminosity LL of the black hole is given by the

formulaL=AσT4L=AσT4where A=4πr2sA=4πrs2 is the

usual Stefan-Boltzmann blackbody

σ=π2k4/(60c2ℏ3)σ=π2k4/(60c2ℏ3) is the Stefan-

surface area of the black hole, and

Boltzmann constant. If the Hawking temperature exceeds the

rest mass energy of a particle type, then the black hole radiates
particles and antiparticles of that type, in addition to photons,

toL=A(neff/2)σT4 ,L=A(neff/2)σT4 ,where neffneff is the

and the Hawking luminosity of the black hole rises

effective number of relativistic particle types, including the

two helicity types (polarizations) of the photon.

Black holes for which astronomical evidence exists have

masses ranging from stellar-sized black holes of a few solar

galaxies, such as the 6×1096×109 solar mass black hole at

masses, up to supermassive black holes in the nuclei of

the centre of the galaxy Messier 87. The Hawking radiation

of a 3030 solar mass black hole is a tiny

from such black holes is minuscule. The Hawking temperature

2×10−9Kelvin2×10−9Kelvin, and its Hawking luminosity a

miserable 10−31Watts10−31Watts. Bigger black holes are
colder and dimmer: the Hawking temperature is inversely
proportional to the mass, while the Hawking luminosity is
inversely proportional to the square of the mass.

Claus Kiefer (1998) ‘‘Towards a Full Quantum Theory of

Black Holes’’ (gr-qc/9803049) gives a pedagogical review of
Hawking radiation and other quantum aspects of black holes.

Black holes death

 Black holes survive by gobbling down the gas
and stars around them, and it’s their gluttony
that gives them away. They are often
 surrounded by accretion disks of material
they’ve torn apart and sucked close, like water
swirling down a drain. As material draws closer,
it begins to travel faster and faster, piling up
around the black hole. Friction among the dust
generates heat, causing the accretion disk to
glow, which outlines the shadow of the black
hole — or its event horizon. “It wants to hide
but it does a pretty bad job of it sometimes,”
says Sheperd Doeleman, a black hole
researcher at Harvard University and director
of the Event Horizon Telescope, which snapped
the first photo of a black hole in 2019.
 Besides giving a black hole away, the event
horizon is also the key to a black hole’s death.
 The material that crosses a black hole’s horizon
is lost forever, as nothing can escape the grip
of these gluttonous monsters. At least, that’s
what our current understanding of gravity
dictates. But this so-called point of no return
fails to take quantum mechanics into account.
 (Physicists are still working to develop a unified
theory of quantum gravity.) In 1974, Stephen
Hawking proved that, from a quantum
perspective, escape from a black hole is
possible, though it is very slow.
 While empty space may seem devoid of
energy, it isn’t — according to quantum
mechanics, the energy of a vacuum fluctuates
slightly over time. Those fluctuations manifest
as pairs of particles — a particle and an
antiparticle — that pop into and out of
existence throughout the universe. Because
energy cannot be created from nothing, one of
the particles will have positive energy and the
other negative. These particle pairs usually
immediately annihilate one another. But if the
particles appear at the boundary of a black
hole’s event horizon, it’s possible for the
particle with negative energy to fall into the
black hole, while the particle with positive
energy escapes. It then appears that the black
hole has radiated a particle away. Einstein
showed that energy and mass are proportional
with his equation E = mc2. Therefore, the
negative energy from the forsaken particle
 actually removes mass from the black hole,
causing it to shrink.
 But don’t expect a black hole to disappear any
time soon. It takes a shockingly long time for a
black hole to shed all of its mass as energy via
Hawking radiation. It would take 10100 years, or
a googol, for a supermassive black hole to fully
disappear. “The entire age of the universe [is]
a fraction of [the time] it would take,” says
Priyamvada Natarajan, a researcher at Yale
University who probes the nature of black
holes. “As far as we’re concerned, it is
eternity.”