Black Holes Essay

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Ever since Einstein described the theory of relativity and predicted black holes, in 1915, they've caught the imagination of the human mind. Most people didn't believe such a wild and mysterious concept, and the people that did, thought of black holes as monsters sucking in everything around them. "...the notion of a collapsed star wasn't taken seriously until astronomers started spotting giant stars orbiting indiscernible points in the 1960's."(Vergano, Dan) Then, human technology had advanced enough to prove and begin understanding black holes. Through research, studies, and many amazing pieces of equipment astronomers have discovered that black holes are much more significant than once believed. Black holes are the suspenders of the Universe.
In order to understand how black holes suspend everything, including life on Earth, a basic knowledge of the research and of black holes in needed.
When humans look to the sky they see only cosmic creatures that shine. There's much more to the Universe than the human eye can see, and for some this is hard to believe. Advances in technology have taken great strides in space research. Proving that something is floating out there is now quite simple, even if you can't see it. "They do this by measuring the visible light, X-rays, and radio waves emitted by material in the immediate environment of a black hole."(Meral, Roeland)
Spotting a black hole from light is not as hard as can be imagined. Black holes don’t give off any visible light, but the gasses and stars orbiting the black holes emit strong light X-rays. These gasses and stars create a disk around the black hole that, "...often give off more energy in a second than our Sun emits in a mi...

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...e could start accreting matter and eventually grow into a supermassive one. A third possibility is that supermassive black holes grow from a cluster of smaller black holes that merge."(Bell, Trudy E.) "The bigger the galaxy, it seems, the bigger the black hole."(Dunn, Marcia)
Supermassive black holes and the galaxy can be compared to the Sun and the solar system.(Smith, Heather R.) Without the Sun pulling on the planets they would float off into the galaxy. If there isn't a black hole pulling on all the stars and planets in the galaxy there will be no galaxy. Sagittarius A is like the Sun on an enormous scale. Sagittarius A alone is suspending over 200 billion stars. With the Universe said to be scattered with 300 billion galaxies,(Vergano, Dan) and a black hole at the center of each and every one, it is safe to say black holes are the suspenders of the Universe.

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