6/26/2023 0 Comments Black hole drawingYou might wonder how astronomers know black holes exist. Anything that passes too close to a black hole (inside a region called the event horizon) will be sucked in. A black hole, however, is an object in space with so much mass and with gravity so strong (that is, it curves spacetime so much) that almost nothing can escape it-not even light. We can also send electromagnetic radiation such as light or radio waves out into space. If that sounds confusing, don’t worry-this activity will help you visualize it.Īlthough Earth's gravity is very strong, we can build rockets and spaceships that can escape it and fly off to the rest of the solar system. So large masses such as Earth cause a large curvature in spacetime whereas smaller masses such as our bodies barely cause any curvature. (If you think of space as three-dimensional and you add time as another dimension, then you get something that has four dimensions.) General relativity describes gravity as the curvature of this four-dimensional spacetime, which is caused by mass. First it describes space and time as a “fabric,” or “continuum” called spacetime. We only feel the gravitational force from huge masses, such as Earth.Įinstein's theory of general relativity describes gravity a little differently. You don’t feel a sideways gravitational pull from the person standing next to you, for example, or even from bigger objects such as cars or buildings. This force between objects, however, is usually too small for us to feel. Technically any object with mass exerts a gravitational force on other objects. In classical, or Newtonian, mechanics, gravity is described as a force that acts between two objects, pulling them together. ![]() If we throw a ball up, it comes back down. It keeps our feet planted on the ground so we don’t float off into space. It’s such a regular part of our lives that we might not give it much thought. Do words like “general relativity,” “gravity well” and “spacetime continuum” sound intimidating? Don’t worry, you don’t have to be Albert Einstein to understand them! Try this fun activity to learn about these concepts and black holes-using some common household materials.
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