Black Holes: Misnamed and Misunderstood
- Amber Dhaliwal
- Jun 15, 2025
- 4 min read
By: Amber Dhaliwal
One of the most commonly known celestial objects to date is the black hole. I mean, is that surprising? They’re mysterious, paradoxical things sharing a universe with us, and they just happen to be vacuums in the vacuum of space. But, what if I told you that they’re not vacuums? Or, that until the 1970s, many scientists didn’t even believe that they existed? Well, this is your guide to black holes, where I’ll tell you everything that you need to know about them.
Firstly, what is a black hole? There’s a common misconception that black holes are just that; holes, in space, that go around eating everything in their path. In reality, according to the Center For Astrophysics, “...mass in a black hole is concentrated in a tiny region, surrounded by a boundary called the “event horizon”. To simplify it, a black hole is a mass that is packed very densely, creating a strong gravitational pull. The event horizon is sometimes referred to as the surface of a black hole. It’s the point where nothing, not even light, can escape. Why? Because the force of gravity is so strong that you need to travel faster than the speed of light to escape, and it is well known that nothing can travel faster than light. This basically means that once matter reaches the event horizon, it’s lost to the outside universe.
Black holes themselves do not emit any light, but we can see the light and heat that other objects emit when they start getting pulled into the gravitational orbit of the black hole, forming what is called an accretion disk. We can also observe them by observing their impact on the space around them. For example, objects orbit black holes. The accretion disk is also just matter that orbits the black hole, outside of the event horizon. As the matter circles the black hole, the speed and friction cause them to heat up an incredible amount, making the space around a black hole bright. Now, what else happens to anything circling a black hole? It goes through a process called the tidal effect, or spaghettification. Simply speaking, as an object gets closer to a black hole, it starts to get stretched and torn apart. Theoretically, if you were going through this process, your head and your feet would be pulled in different directions due to the gravitational force of the black hole, leading to you being stretched into an elongated object resembling spaghetti. Stars go through this and it’s called stellar tidal disruption. The star gets torn apart from the intense gravity and stellar debris becomes a part of the accretion disc, releasing high energy radiation, such as X-rays. Spaghettification isn’t isolated to just black holes, of course, but we won’t be discussing other times it occurs.
Now, we’ve learned the basics of black holes, so, how do they form? Well, funnily enough, they’re mostly formed by stars. To be more precise, the death of stars. Not just any random stars though. When a massive star reaches the end of its lifetime, its core can become unstable, causing it to collapse in on itself. This compresses the star into a singularity caused by zero volume and infinite density. What’s a singularity? According to NASA Science, “General relativity predicts that the very center of a black hole contains a point where matter is crushed to infinite density.” It’s theorized that it’s where all matter that enters a black hole ends up. However, as of right now, we’re not sure if that’s the case, since we don’t know what’s inside of a black hole.
If you’re a Muse or Twilight fan, you might be familiar with the song “Supermassive Black Hole”. A supermassive black hole is just as it sounds; a super, massive, black hole. They’re classified as objects that are tens of thousands to billions of times the size of our sun. Almost every galaxy on the larger side has one at its center, including our very own Milky Way. Ours is called Sagittarius A* and is 4 million times the mass of the sun. We’re not entirely sure how they came to be but research shows that they were created around the first billion years of the universe. This may have given them more time than newer black holes to grow. They grow by feeding on objects like neutron stars and by colliding into each other. These collisions can be “heard” through the massive gravitational waves they send out, which have been described as almost a chirp. If you’re interested, there may be a video or two on youtube of what it may sound like.
As this blog comes to an end, let’s discuss one more topic. What is time dilation? If you’ve watched Interstellar, it may be a topic you’re somewhat familiar with. To explain easily, let's use an example. Say that scientists have figured out how to travel at the speed of light, or 99.9999% the speed of light. You get selected to travel to the Andromeda galaxy, the closest galaxy to ours at a distance of 2.5 million light years. For you, a short amount of time passes in the travel to and from the Andromeda galaxy. On Earth, 4-5 million years would have passed by the time you got home. Crazy, right? So how does this correlate to black holes? Well, due to the intense gravity, time passes differently there. If person A got too close to a black hole while person B observed, person A would be getting slower and slower until they came to a full stop. Now, for person B, person A could be “stuck” in the same spot for billions of years. For person A, it may just be a few hours until they’re fully consumed.
In conclusion, black holes are one of the coolest celestial objects ever; at least in my opinion.
About the author: Hello! My name is Amber Dhaliwal, and I'm a junior in high school. I enjoy researching and talking about the universe, and I'm very excited to share my findings with you.
so good!
Love this! Thanks for sharing