Facts about: Black Holes

What are black holes?

Basically, black holes are regions in space-time that have such a strong gravity, that nothing we know of can escape - not even light. It's called a black hole because all the light going into it is absorbed, and none is reflected. The theory of black holes was first proposed by Karl Schwarzschild.

Where do black holes come from?

Black holes are created when a large-enough star reaches the end of its life cycle and dies. When a star collapses, like in this picture, the remnants of the star get packed together in a small, super dense space. This little lump of star creates a metric-crap-ton of gravity. Once the star reaches its Schwarzschild radius, the size it has to be compressed down into in order to make its escape velocity faster than the speed of light, it has become a black hole.

The escape velocity is the speed at which something must go in order to escape a body's gravitational pull.

What do black holes do?

In essence, they suck everything up. If anything, even light, get's too close to the black hole, it will suck it up. Even if the object emitting or reflecting light is so far away from a black hole doesn't suck it up, the light will be distorted, causing the object to seem "wrapped" around the black hole. This is known as gravitational lensing.

Where are black holes?

They can occur and reside anywhere in the universe; as long as there's a star that can die, a black hole can be possible anywhere. It's generally believed that black holes are in the center in most, if not all, galaxies.

What would happen if I were to fall into a black hole?

Well, as we got closer and closer to the black hole, light would get more and more distorted. Then, we would reach the event horizon, the point at which there's no escape. When we get to the point where the blackness is taking up most of our vision, we've reached the photon sphere, a place where photons can actually orbit the black hole. Here, theoretically speaking, we could see the back of our heads because the light reflecting off of our heads would orbit all the way around to our eyes.

As we go deeper and deeper, eventually what would happen is called "spaghettification" (trust me, that's the scientific term). Assuming you fell in feet first, the gravity would be so strong that your legs would get stretched farther and father away from your head until it ripped off. Then, you know, you'd die.

That's all for now!

Again, thanks for reading guys. I'm hoping this'll take off if you guys like it. Also, if you see anything wrong, feel free to tell me!

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole
www.space.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pAnRKD4raY - Vsauce, "Travel inside a black hole".