How Black Holes Work.

 

Konstantinos Koloutsos

Mr. Ippolito 

Current Events #3 (Review)

10/05/21

https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/black-hole.htm 

Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D. “How Black Holes Work.” HowStuffWorks Science, HowStuffWorks, 22 Feb. 2021, science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/black-hole.htm.  

            The phenomenon of black holes has never ceased to amaze us, each and every day we find new ways of understanding them. In the article “How Black Holes Work” by  Craig Freudenrich, we are taken through the basics of black holes. Freudenrich starts off the article by explaining what a black hole is, what the different parts of it are. The article explains that a black hole is formed after a star dies, and all its mass compresses into the core. The core is the central part of the black hole also known as the singularity; the opening of the black hole is called the event horizon. The article goes on to talk about the different types of black holes, like the Schwarzschild and the Kerr. The Schwarzschild is a non-rotating black hole and the Kerr is a rotating black hole. A black hole rotating depends on if the star was rotating before it died, the most common in nature are Kerr black holes. The article also explains to the reader that if an object crosses the event horizon there is no possibility of it coming back. Although we cannot see black holes we can still measure things like mass, electric charge, and rate of rotation. The last part of the article talks about how we are able to detect black holes even though we can't see them. Black holes aren’t visible to the human eye but we can use the objects around a black hole to detect and measure it. Due to the way objects behave around a black hole we can use the behavior of the objects to calculate the black holes mass. Not to mention, when an object falls into the event horizon it is heated to millions of degrees kelvin, emitting x-rays that can be viewed by certain telescopes. 

            While it may be true that the nearest black hole is thousands of light years away there is still so much we can learn from them. Black holes have such a huge impact on the way our world works, black holes are still so new we don’t really know what they are. All we know is that they are extremely powerful and massive. Our laws and theories of physics still don’t apply to the nature of black holes. There is still so much we can learn from these ominous objects of nature. The more we find out about black holes the more we find out about life as we know it, the knowledge we can gain from studying black holes is so vast. It’s crazy to think about because black holes could have all the answers we are looking for and yet we can go beyond what we see yet. 

            This article was very well written, it had great subtopics to help guide the reader along and not get stuck while learning about black holes. Black holes are very sophisticated and can be very difficult to learn about, however this article was able to break down the most important parts and simplify them for the reader. Despite the fact that this article did a good job at explaining black holes, there weren’t any statistics or experts in the article. The article was just plain information, and while that may be helpful, experts and statistics are what make articles like this interesting. By using experts you can bring the reader even more and make them want to learn more and read more articles about this topic.