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A Tale of Two Singularities: The Structure of a Black Hole Interiors This means that describing the actual interior of any black hole is fairly straightforward, if mathematically grueling. As part of what is called the no-hair theorem, they can only possess three characteristics mass–as described above–angular momentum, or electric charge. This involves either the accretion of a great deal of mass by the black hole or through subsequentially larger and larger black holes colliding and merging–probably when the galaxies that house them merge or when binary black holes spiral into each other–or even a combination of both.įortunately, the properties of black holes are actually believed to be fairly simple.
#FALLING INTO A BLACK HOLE SIMULATION SERIES#
This is because no star exists that is large enough to collapse and form a supermassive black hole–some of which have been discovered with masses as great as 66 BILLION times that of the sun.Īstrophysicists and cosmologists believe supermassive black holes form through a series of hierarchical mergers.
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This process can’t explain the presence at the heart of most large galaxies of supermassive black holes, however. That leads to the complete gravitational collapse of the star and the creation of what is termed a stellar-mass black hole. This results in a stellar remnant called a neutron star.īut, some stars are massive enough–or can grab enough material from a companion star– to exceed even this limit. This process repeats for these stars–which are at least 1.4 times the mass of the sun– until only the quantum properties of a dense fluid of neutrons protect the dead star against further collapse. As this collapse proceeds, stars that have enough mass–above what is called the Chandrasekhar limit– can trigger further fusion reactions creating heavier elements and halting the collapse.