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Stars and Black Holes Essay

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Below you will read research on stars and black holes. Black holes are stars whose core has been crushed by gravity. In the text to follow you will see how a star forms, read about its life and how it becomes a black hole.

Stars are composed of hydrogen gas and dust. Stars owe their existence to the force of gravity. Stars are created from the thinly spread atoms of dust and gas that swirl throughout space. The atoms clump together into dense clouds that eventually collapse under their own gravity. Other forces counteract the gravity. The dust and cloud grows steadily hotter until a nuclear furnace ignites creating a bright shining star. (Couper H. & Henbest N., 1996).

Stars are born when particles of hydrogen, helium and …show more content…

(Darling D., 1985)

A supernova is an explosion that marks the end of the life of a massive star. A supernova has the mass three times the mass of the sun and explodes. Most black holes form after a supernova or explosion of a giant star. (Sipiera P., 1997).

Black holes are created when a star's very heavy core is squeezed hard enough to create matter into a tiny spot smaller than a pinhole from which nothing can escape including light. (Darling D., 1985).

The super strong gravity of a black hole pulls gases off nearby stars with such a force that the gases give off x-rays as they form an accretion disk of matter that spirals into the black hole. (Gallant R ., 2000).

Astronomers have theorized that there is a giant black hole eating out the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. A supernova is an explosion that marks the end of the life of a massive star. Most black holes form after a supernova or explosion of a giant star. Scientists theorize that a black hole looks like a black ball in space that is not very large. Inside you would see nothing. The surface of the ball is called the event horizon. The event horizon is the place where no light can escape. All things disappear from our universe in the black holes center. It is called the singularity. The distance between the event horizon and singularity is called the schwartzchild radius that measures the actual size of the black hole. (Sipiera P., 1997)

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