• Question: how do you make a black hole

    Asked by 549susa38 to Ahmed, Francesca, George, James, Nitheen on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: James Sullivan

      James Sullivan answered on 13 Nov 2014:


      Hi 549,

      you’d need a star about 20 times the size of the sun to come to the end of its life (when all its fuel is used) and collapse in on itself.

      You couldn’t do this on earth.

    • Photo: Nitheen Kaperi

      Nitheen Kaperi answered on 13 Nov 2014:


      Hi Susa,

      You need a box of neutrons and need to compress it even further. This would of course require forces not yet fathomable by humanity in next 100 years.
      In nature, this can only happen when a star about 20 times the size of sun collapses under its own weight giving rise to a neutron star i.e. a big box of neutrons which further collapses under its own gravity to become a black hole. In case, the neutron star is not big enough, it becomes a pulsar and rotates around its own axis at neck break speeds. Pulsars have been used by astronomers to measure distances since they rotate at constant speed.

    • Photo: George Dowson

      George Dowson answered on 14 Nov 2014:


      The main way is to squeeze matter into a ball smaller than a certain radius (called the Schwarzchild radius). This happens naturally in very very large stars or when old dead stars (neutron stars) gain too much weight. We can’t do it on earth!

      There is another way. You can slow light down. This is actually being looked at in black hole dynamics using strange matter called condensates. These are very cold “gases” which can slow light down to walking pace. If you then create a whirlpool in the “gas” you would have a 2D representation of a black hole!

    • Photo: Ahmed Osman

      Ahmed Osman answered on 17 Nov 2014:


      you can’t make it on Earth as it need you to make the nucleus with no space so it will be very very dense material, can you image if we pressurized I milliar and 600 million people with no space in their nucleus they will measure just 1cm
      thanks
      Ahmed

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