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=__The Mystery of the Black Hole!__=

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**Black Holes- An introduction**
Wow! Everyone, kids, adults, and even scientists have been wondering about these monsters in our galaxy an space. No one has actually found out what these are, or how they form, but have made some conclusions based on the scientific reasonings they have did over the past few years. This mysterious "creature" has sort of been haunting us. But scientists are continuing to do lots of research on black holes and find out what is happening "behind the scenes" on this mysterious spot in our galaxy. This web page is about Black holes and two important people: Stephen Hawking and Andrea Mia Ghez. This web page also includes about 12 questions on black holes including what they are, how they form, and etc.

=Our Assignment=

Our teacher, Mr. Garrison, has assigned us to make a podcast on anything, and we chose to do it on a Black Hole. We have to make a wikispace (this one) and follow the Big 6 steps. The big 6 steps are a series of steps that help us research about our educational topic. We will use garage band to record our script and Mr.Garrison will post it on the website and everyone can see our podcast! This trimester will be a good time for teamwork and responsibility. So, read about this mysterious "creature" in space!

=Big 6 1.2 Ten Essential Questions=

**1. What are Black Holes?**
Black holes are the end of the blue giant stars when they go supernova.This gravity is so powerful that anything that comes within range of the black hole is sucked into space forever. Even if light comes within range it can't escape. If any space ship goes into a black hole it would not survive the pressure. Since not even light can escape it is all black and it is called a black hole.

A black hole is formed when a blue giant star over ten times as big as our sun goes supernova. The remains of the star have gravity that they cannot contain. Because when a star still has hydrogen the heat produced will push out while the gravity will push in.When there is no more heat produced nothing can push out.So it eventually will be so compressed till it becomes very heavy and dense. Actually it has infinite density. It gets smaller and smaller until it is only a few miles wide.Its gravity will become so strong that it will turn into a black hole.

**3. Will the Sun Become a Black Hole?**
No. The sun will not go supernova and become a black hole. Instead when it reaches the end of it's life it burns up all the hydrogen in their core. The hydrogen is what it uses for producing light and heat.Any way when this happens they start to swell up until they become many times there original size. In a couple billion years it will become so large that it will go past the planet Venus. Stars this size will eventually lose their outer layers of their atmosphere creating a nebula.Then they will probably become a white dwarf. Stars that are smaller than giants will probably shrink to a very tiny white dot called a neutron star.

4. Will All Stars Become Black Holes?
Only stars with very large masses can become black holes. Our Sun, will not become a black hole because it doesn't have enough mass to be a black hole. Much more massive stars, such as those blue giants with masses of over 20 times our Sun's mass, may eventually create a black hole when the star goes supernova. When a massive star runs out of fuel, it can no longer support its weight so it begins to collapse. Then when this occurs, the star heats up and some fraction of its outer layer, which often still contains some fresh nuclear fuel, starts the nuclear reaction again and explodes in what is called a supernova. The remaining innermost of the star still continues to collapse. Depending on how massive the core is, it may become either a neutron star and stop the collapse or it may continue to collapse into a black hole. A black hole formed from a star is called a stellar black hole, one of the three types of black holes.



5. Are Black Holes Related to Wormholes?
Well actually black holes are technically wormholes because worm holes teleport in a way to another part of the universe.The black hole does the same thing. When you go into a black hole you will be traveling at fast speeds. If you survive the singularity, you will be thrown of into an entire different part of the universe or even another universe itself.No one knows the answer to these questions but they have made artificial black holes.Maybe one day scientists will find out



**6. How Big Can a Black Hole Get?**
According to the theory that explains and predicts features of the black hole, there is no lower limit to the size of a black hole. Some hints from recent work on this theory suggest that a black hole can be no smaller than about "10-to-the-(-33)" cm in radius which 0.000000000000000000000000000000001 cm. On that small a size scale, even the apparently smooth nature of space will break down into a "rat-trap" of tunnels, loops, and other tangled up structures! At least, that's what current work suggests. The largest known black hole is a core of the M87, a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. The M87 black hole appears to be about three billion times the mass of the Sun, with a diameter of about 11 billion miles (18 billion km) - almost twice the diameter of the orbit of Pluto, the most-distant planet in our solar system.

7. What Happens When a Black Hole Interacts With Another Black Hole?
According to a few scientists, two black holes can't hit each other because of their hight energy they will repulse each other. But according to other scientists, if two black holes interact with each other it will be catastrophic, and would create a big bang. Nothing would survive if two black holes formed together. It would be enough force to suck anything up in the universe.



8. Is time travel possible when two black holes merge?
Nothing spectacular (like time travel) happens when two black holes merge. When two black holes merge, they just form a big black hole, that is all. Of course, there are some interesting processes that happen before they merge. When two black holes orbit each other, gravitational waves are let out according to the laws of general relativity, and as a result the black holes come closer to one another. Finally, there is a burst of gravitational radiation close to the place where the two black holes meet. These are the kind of events that scientists are trying to detect with their gravitational wave detectors, to prove another mystery about our galaxy.

**9. How Close Could something get to a black hole?**

 * T**hat depends on how much stuff is inside the black hole. The more matter that is forced inside the stronger its gravity. A planet could orbit around a black hole and not get sucked in. All the planets would continue to orbit a brand new black hole because it has the same amount of gravity and matter as the sun before it became a black hole.

**10. How many types of black holes are there?**
So far, scientists have found three types of black holes. They are supermassive, stellar, and miniature black holes. Supermassive black holes are commonly found in the center of spiral galaxies. That means there is at least one in our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists say that supermassive black holes may have created the formation of galaxies. The supermassive black hole in our galaxy may be over 3 million times the size of our own sun. There are over two dozen stellar black holes identified by scientists in the Milky Way. Stellar black holes are the biggest types of black holes. The two heaviest known stellar black holes are found in a galaxy outside our own. One of these is called M33 X-7 in the Triangulum Galaxy. Miniature black holes may have formed during the beginning of our universe. After the Big Bang, some parts expanded more than others, squeezing it together forming a miniature black hole. Our galaxy may be granted, but is very dangerous. = =

11. What happens when a black hole goes through a star?
This would depend on the mass of the black hole. Scientists are pretty much confident that there are supermassive black holes at the centers of many galaxies. Even the Milky Way Galaxy! These supermassive black holes are millions of times more massive than the Sun, and are bigger than most stars. One of these supermassive black holes would tear the star apart and then destroy the gas. Scientists are also very confident that very massive stars would end up as black holes, with masses 5-10 times that of the Sun. Collision of such a black hole and a normal star would be very violent, and may completely disrupt the normal star.

12. What is a black hole made of?
The matter that falls into a black hole is no different from the matter which makes up the rest of the universe. However, physics as we currently understand it breaks down at the center of a black hole.We think we understand what happens in extreme gravity, and we think we understand what happens at microscopic scales, but if the two are combined the theories break down and we have no idea what's going on. Only a theory of gravity that is compatible with quantum mechanics could describe the physics "inside" a black hole. Currently, there is no such theory even though several physicists around the world are working on it. Until scientists come up with an answer, we will not know what exists at the center of a black hole. Although we have yet to detect a black hole directly, most scientists are convinced of their existence. The particulars -- that is, what does a black hole look like, exactly -- are still debated.Albert Einstein's theories tell us that black holes are made of pure gravitational energy. They have mass and spin, but contain no matter. Anything that falls into a black hole is converted to energy.

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**Stephen Hawking:**

 * 1) **Stephen William Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 (300 years after the death of Galileo) in Oxford, England.**
 * 2) **Went to University College, Oxford.**
 * 3) **Stephen Hawking has worked on the basic laws that include the universe. He made a discovery about black holes=concludes that they can suck up anything in the universe including light and gravity.**
 * 4) **After 30 years of arguing that a black hole can suck up anything, he lost one of the most famous bets.**
 * 5) **Stephen Hawking was a mental but very important person for he had discovered about black holes**

**Andrea Mia Ghez**

 * 1) **An astrophysicist= best known in scientific community for her revolutionary discoveries concerning star formation and that the black hole is in our center of the galaxy**
 * 2) **Black holes are ultra dense remains of one immense stars, so massive that even light can not escape the pull of gravity**
 * 3) **Although we can not see a black hole- we can see its effect on neighboring stars**
 * 4) **The greater its mass, the faster the stars revolve around it**
 * 5) **Now studying star formation regions and supermassive black holes in the center of the Milky Way, known as the Sagittarius A**

Videos
Here are 3 videos about black holes. They are from youtube and can be found in our bibliography. These are mainly about black holes and how scientists think they are a powerful object in the universe.

Video 1- //__Black Holes__//
A video on black holes! media type="youtube" key="lum2Af-UpNA&rel=1&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca&border=1" height="291" width="332"

Video 2- __//Proof of Black Holes//__
Future NASA projects dedicated to the research of Black Holes. media type="youtube" key="l8yN77SpreQ&rel=1&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca&border=1" height="296" width="337"

Video 3- __//Black Holes..........Monsters in Space//__
Black hole's gravity.

media type="youtube" key="M0xFInZ_0Tc&rel=1&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca&border=1" height="301" width="343"

For more videos about black holes, please go to this website: http://youtube.com/results?search_query=black%20holes&search=Search&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&spell=1

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The Mystery of the Black Hole! Webpage 2
Our group has more to show you so visit our bibliography and more videos!

Click this to go to our Bibliography http://teamforce.wikispaces.com/Black+Hole+Bibliography

Click here to see more videos http://teamforce.wikispaces.com/Powerpoint%26videos = =