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Black holes, the very words conjure up vast devouring monsters that lurk out in the depths of space waiting to devour any hapless ships, stars, even galaxies that get too close.

However like many misconceptions this one is based partly on fact and partly on fantasy. Let's get the facts straight before we move on.

A black hole is not a hole, they are not truly black, and they are not running around trying to eat everything in the universe.

A black hole is the area around a quantum singularity.

A what? You might ask.

A quantum singularity is an area of space that has zero radius and infinite density. they are created either at the death of a massive star where there is so much matter that even the atomic forces cannot hold it up. The limit of this is about 3 solar masses. anything smaller than that will either become a neutron star or a white dwarf (but those two are two entirely different articles). The single biggest singularity ever was the big bang.. before it banged. our entire universe was inside of it. When we look out into space now we are seeing the big bang still going on to this very day... once again this is a topic for another article though. some small bits of the big bang could still be lurking as ancient black holes, as old as the universe is. These could possibly be smaller than the 3 solar mass limit.

Now, let's go back to that one sentence. A black hole is the area around a quantum singularity.

That still doesn't tell us much does it?

Every object in the universe has an escape velocity, or the speed at which something must move to escape the object's gravity. Earth's escape velocity is about 39600 km/h.

On the "surface" of a black hole (a region forever known as the event horizon) the escape velocity is equal to the speed of light. so anything moving slower than light (which is to say, everything) cannot escape once it is past the event horizon.

It is within this event horizon that the black hole is.

you should note that the event horizon is not a tangible surface, it's more of an imaginary border.

So now we all know what a black hole is. So what do they do?

Well now it really gets confusing. Since black holes, the universe's most dark bodies create some of the universe's brightest things.

Quasars are the extremely luminous cores of ancient and distant galaxies. But in there somewhere lurks a supermassive black hole. the vast beasts contain thousands or millions of solar masses, and virtually every galaxy out there has one in its center, even the Milky Way

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