Black Hole [UPSC Notes]

Recently astronomers have spotted a dying star swallowing a large planet.  Read on to know more about Black hole and the significance of this discovery. This is an important topic for the IAS exam science and technology segment.

What is black hole? 

• Black holes are points in space that are so dense they create deep gravity sinks. Beyond a certain region, not even light can escape the powerful tug of a black hole’s gravity.
• In other words, Black holes are regions in space where an enormous amount of mass is packed into a tiny volume.

Star swallows planet in one big gulp: 

• An incident was reported in which a dying star has been subsumed in the black hole. This was originally thought to be a gamma ray burst from a collapsing star but it was different. 
• Traditional gamma ray bursts involve a deluge of high-energy photons bursting through space. They generally result from the explosion of a star or when two objects collide.
• Most galaxies are thought to have black holes at their centre. The burst also came from the centre of a galaxy four billion light years away. 
• It was noticed that “This black hole was sitting dormant, a star got too close, its gas got ripped apart and in doing so some of it got spit up.”
• Scientists have also spotted hundreds of planets with small orbits that are doomed to fall within the radius of red giants in the future.

Life cycle of the stars: 

• The life cycles of stars are linked to their masses. Small stars, like red dwarfs, may shine for trillions of years, whereas the most massive stars explode just a few million years after their births. 
• As stars like the sun start to die after billions of years, they transform into a class called red giants that expand hundreds of times in size, consuming anything within their advancing borders.

Significance of discovery: 

• The discovery “provides a missing link in our understanding of the evolution and final fates of planetary systems,” including the one we inhabit. 
• It will enable us to get insight about the astronomical incidence and the pattern in which the galaxies and the solar system works. 

Black Hole [UPSC Notes]:- Download PDF Here