• Question: Do you believe in black holes?

    Asked by redfox20 to Catherine, Charlotte, Colin, Becki, Rick on 25 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Rick Smith

      Rick Smith answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Yes. We can’t directly see the black holes (obviously they are black) there are ways we can detect them. Astronomers have seen the way stars have been pulled by the massive gravitational forces of black holes by watching the way they move in space.

      There are other ways of us detecting them. The gravity of a black hole is so strong that not even light can escape the surface, but just at the edge of a black hole (the event horizon) is where some light can escape and some light cannot and falls into the blackhole. A very very small amount of radiation is emitted from the event horizon of a black hole that astronomers have been able to detect which is like a signature of a black hole.

    • Photo: Rebecca Scott

      Rebecca Scott answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      yes, they suck in the light and things around them. But astronomers can detect them.

    • Photo: Colin Swift

      Colin Swift answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      All the evidebnce points to their existance – a massive star collapses so that its core is so denst that the geravitational field is so great that light can not escape…pretty mad concept but a few have been discovered!

    • Photo: Charlotte Dalton

      Charlotte Dalton answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      yes, the x rays they give out that we can detect are good evidence they are there beacause we don’t know of anything else that would give out such radiation

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