What is a Black Hole | We Asked a NASA Expert

We Asked A NASA Expert Social Plan We Asked A NASA Expert Social Plan 100% E12 What exactly is a black hole? Well, they’re not holes at all, rather incredibly dense regions in space with gravity so strong, not even light can escape. There are stellar-mass black holes, which form when massive stars collapse and explode in a supernova, and supermassive black holes, which are millions to billions of times more massive and sit at the centers of galaxies. Scientists know these cosmic powerhouses shape galaxies and influence how the universe evolves. But how do supermassive black holes form? That’s still one of astronomy’s biggest mysteries. A NASA scientist explains what we know (and don’t know) about these cosmic gargantuans. Explore more on black holes: https://www.nasa.gov/black-holes Producers: Scott Bednar, Pedro Cota, Jessie Wilde Editor: Daniel Salazar Credit: NASA What exactly is a black hole? Well, they’re not holes at all, rather incredibly dense regions in space with gravity so strong, not even light can escape. There are stellar-mass black holes, which form when massive stars collapse and explode in a supernova, and supermassive black holes, which are millions to billions of times more massive and sit at the centers of galaxies. Scientists know these cosmic powerhouses shape galaxies and influence how the universe evolves. But how do supermassive black holes form? That’s still one of astronomy’s biggest mysteries. A NASA scientist explains what we know (and don’t know) about these cosmic gargantuans. Explore more on black holes: https://www.nasa.gov/black-holes Producers: Scott Bednar, Pedro Cota, Jessie Wilde Editor: Daniel Salazar Credit: NASA Turn on screen reader support To enable screen reader support, press ⌘+Option+Z To learn about keyboard shortcuts, press ⌘slashAnonymous Mink has joined the document.

What is said in the film

What is a black hole? We Asked a NASA Scientist. What is a black hole? Well, the name is actually a little misleading because black holes aren't actually holes. They’re regions in space that have a gravitational pull that is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light.

Scientists know about two different sizes of black holes — stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes. A stellar-mass black hole is born when a massive star dies. That's a star that's larger than our own Sun. These stars burn up all the nuclear fuel in their cores, and this causes them to collapse under their own gravity. This collapse causes an explosion that we call a supernova.

The entire mass of the star is collapsing down into a tiny point, and the area of the black hole is just a few kilometers across. Supermassive black holes can have a mass of millions to tens of billions of stars. Scientists believe that every galaxy in the universe contains a supermassive black hole. That's up to one trillion galaxies in the universe. But we don't know how these supermassive black holes form.

And this is an area of active research. What we do know is that supermassive black holes are playing a really important part in the formation and evolution of galaxies, and into our understanding of our place in the universe. We Asked a NASA Scientist. NASA. A NASA 360 Production.

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