It’s no secret in astrophysics that scientists are still struggling even today to understand how black holes work. These cosmic objects are so rebellious that they defy even the laws of physics themselves in several ways.
But when you say “black hole,” the first thing that pops into the mind is a lot of matter slipping into the abyss. We’re also tempted to believe that there has to be some kind of “hole” there, but an astrophysicist comes to tell us that we might be a little off track.
Black holes are actually chunks of matter
Black holes are not “the absence” of something, as many people believe. An astrophysicist from Oxford known as Dr. Becky (Rebecca Smethurst, to be more precise) says that black holes are not actually “holes.” Instead, it would be more reasonable to perceive them as chunks of matter crushed into a very small portion of space that’s extremely dense. She explains this in her book called “A Brief History of Black Holes.”
A video posted last year reveals the astrophysicist’s view on black holes. She also tries to answer another important question about these cosmic objects: what’s inside them? Dr. Becky brings the tragic response that scientists don’t know the answer to that question.
Black holes are not holes that you can fall into.
According to Dr. Becky, we also need to stop picturing black holes in 3D.
She also explained in the video:
The questuion I get asked most often by people is ‘what’s inside a black hole?’ A short answer to that question is ‘we don’t know.’ And under our current understanding of the laws of physics, we don’t think we’ll ever know.
What’s for sure is that scientists still know a lot more today about black holes than they did decades ago, which means that we can definitely hope for them to uncover more crucial aspects about these cosmic monsters and share them with us!
