• Question: What is in the center of a black hole?

    Asked by rameez786 to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 7 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by TJJohnson, Talan007, Abz, Liam.E, kiand, Matthew S.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 7 Nov 2014:

      No one really knows. At the centre of a black hole our current laws of physics break down, so really your guess is as good as anyone elses.
      We know it is a really dense place, but we really don’t have much clue what goes on inside them.
      Maybe you’ll be the person who works it out!

    • Photo: Jane MacArthur

      Jane MacArthur answered on 7 Nov 2014:

      Einstein’s relativity describes the centre of a black hole as a gravitational “singularity”, a single point with zero volume but with all of the mass of the black hole, ie infinite density. However, as Julian says, things break down at this point, as particle interactions (quantum theory) should take over at such high density.
      A single theory is being searched for, to reconcile both quantum and gravitational theory which they hope will explain or resolve singularities more successfully!

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 9 Nov 2014:

      Your guess is as good as ours! We know black holes are incredibly high density, with gravity so extreme that even light can’t escape. We can study the material falling into them and the high energy radiation this causes (some send out ‘jets’ at almost the speed of light – ). After that we start getting a bit stuck. If we wanted to send a probe/robot to a black hole, like we do with planets, the difference in gravitational pull between the top and bottom of the object would cause it to tear apart before it even got close. This is called ‘spaghettification’!!

    • Photo: Heather Campbell

      Heather Campbell answered on 9 Nov 2014:

      Great, answers from the others in the space-zone team. One more interesting thing a black hole can do is shred a star when it’s orbit gets too close, and this can create a bright flare, which tells us the story. This phenomena is called a “Tidal Disruption Effect”. They have been predicted but not observed yet. Hopefully the Gaia Science Alerts will discover some of these in the next few years.

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