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Asked by eskimojoe to Andrew, Ben, Beth, Heather, Louisa on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
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Ben Still answered on 18 Jun 2010:
We can’t tell exactly what happens at the centre of a black hole. This is because there is a point of no return, called the event horizon, where not even light can escape, so no information can be seen directly of what is going on beyond this point. There are lots of theories of what might be happening (see my answer to “what is a wormhole?”) but honestly we can’t tell for sure.
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Andrew McKinley answered on 19 Jun 2010:
It is thought that when material falls into a black hole, the gravitational force is so strong it can overcome the repulsion between atoms and starts to squash them together. As it falls further, that force gets stronger and stronger until everything is squashed together.
An atom is mostly empty space – 99.99999999% empty space is the best guess! most of the mass of the atom is held in the nucleus, so when you squash all these together, by eliminating this empty space, you will wind up with a fantastically dense material.
i’ve heard it said that if you removed the space from all the atoms inside every human being on the planet, we’d all fit inside a thimble – amazing what some people think about!!!
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Beth Dyson answered on 21 Jun 2010:
I don’t know a lot about black holes, but seeing as no one has ever been in one and come back out again, I’m not sure how much we know! As far as I understand it, they have a huge amount of gravity and pull in matter from around themselves, compressing it to a very very dense region, which has no volume. I can’t quite get my head round a region of infinite density, but I’d imagine the forces are so strong that once you’re inside a black hole, not a lot happens!
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