What causes black holes?

Black holes are the end result of gravitational collapse when there is insufficient energy to keep matter from falling into a singularity and outside of the known laws of physics for this universe. This can happen because atoms are mostly empty space. If you could condense the atoms in your body so that there was no space between sub-atomic particles, you would collapse into and object so small, not even someone using a scanning electron microscope would be able to see you. This is one of the principle ideas behind the formation of black holes, but there are certain limits that must be overcome. Black holes have a few origins according to cosmologists. The usual cause is when a massive star about three times the mass of the sun expends its fuel and collapses dramatically during a super nova explosion-implosion event. Cosmology tells us that during the beginning moments of the cosmos, many black holes of all sizes including mini black holes were formed in the primordial density of the early fireball of the big bang event. Not all cosmologists accept the big bang as the beginning of the universe. The third cause is when two neutron stars merge.

Every star in the cosmos exists in a state of delicate balance between total gravitational collapse into a singularity and pressure exerted by electrostatic repulsion and energy created as a result of fusion. As a star condenses from a dark nebular cloud into a compact rotating object, the force of gravity helps to condense it to the point where temperatures and pressures are high enough to cause fusion of simple hydrogen into helium 3 and helium 4. In the process, the condensing plasma is kept from collapsing further due to the repulsion of positively charged nucleons and the generation of gamma radiation due to the matter and anti-matter annihilation of electrons and positrons that are the by product of fusion. Stars come in all sizes and have different fates. A star will not collapse beyond certain thresholds provided the energy can be derived from fusion of low mass elements and isotopes into more massive ones.

Red dwarfs will glow for a long time as they fuse elements slowly. They are expected to burn for hundreds of billions of years. As mass of stars increase, so does the rate of fusion. Life expectancy on the other hand decreases with mass increase in an inverse proportion. Stars that can fuse elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, neon but not beyond will end as white dwarfs.

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