Black Holes By Jean Simon Laplace - 1669 Words

Black holes, complex and difficult to understand, have intrigued both scientists and physicists alike since the eighteenth century. French scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace, born in 1749, was one of the first scientists to argue for the existence of an unexplainable body that encompasses an endless amount of space . Following Laplace, John Archibald Wheeler, an American physicist born in 1911, coined the term â€Å"black hole† for a space entity that is â€Å"so compact (in other words, has enough mass in a small enough volume) that its gravitational force is strong enough to prevent light† and all other matter from fleeing its body (What Is a Black Hole?). Black holes, therefore, are masses that have a gravitational force so great that they attract†¦show more content†¦As previously stated, black holes are immense sources of gravity, consisting of a region of â€Å"infinitely small volume† (How Big Is a Black Hole?). This region is known as the central sin gularity of a black hole. Surrounding the central singularity is the event horizon, â€Å"an imaginary sphere† that indicates the point at which a stationary black hole’s gravitational pull will begin to draw material into its central singularity. For example, the Schwarzschild radius, the distance between the event horizon and central singularity, of Earth is approximately the â€Å"size of a marble,† meaning that the Earth would have to be the size of a marble in order to reach its event horizon, thus becoming a black hole. On the other hand, black holes are not always immobile bodies; they also spin around their own axis. Therefore the central singularity of rotating black holes are not a point but instead a â€Å"thin ring.† Furthermore, the event horizon will consist of two spheres instead of one. The area between both event horizons is known as the â€Å"ergosphere†. Motionless Black Hole Structure2 Spinning Black Hole Structure2 Despite the fact that black holes are be either stationary or in motion, all black holes are categorized into two groups, stellar-mass and supermassive. Stellar-mass black holes are approximately â€Å"a few times heavier