A black hole is a space object with a very strong gravitational field resulting from massive amounts of matter fitting into a small area. The gravitational pull in the black hole is so strong that not even light can exist there. The gravity from the black hole also attracts all objects within a certain range and swallows those objects, increasing their mass with the mass of the captured object. Scientists define several types of black holes depending on their size, miniature, stellar, intermediate, and supermassive. For example, according to NASA (2020), stellar-mass black holes equal three to dozens of solar masses, while supermassive black holes can weigh up to 1000,000 billion solar masses. However, hypothetical types of black holes are also present in the system of differences, such as primordial black holes, the potential sources for further development of supermassive black holes.
Most of the knowledge about black holes available to humanity is connected with the process of a star’s explosion or supernova. Supernova explosions occur due to gradual changes in gravity through the star’s life cycle. According to NASA (2020), the stellar-mass black hole occurs from a supernova when a star 20 times higher in mass than the sun exhausts its inner nuclear fuel. Once stars run out of inner fuel and cannot produce enough heat to maintain the balance between gravity and pressure, gravity causes the star to explode. After the explosion, only a remaining star core is left in the space. Furthermore, if the star’s remaining core matter contains more mass than three solar masses, gravity causes the core to collapse upon itself, resulting in a birth of a black hole (NASA, 2020).
References
NASA. (2020). What are black holes? Web.