How do they work, like I’m just confused I don’t understand anything about them
In: Physics
Imagine a big, stretchy sheet, pulled out tightly. That’ll be space.
Now imagine pushing a toy car across the sheet. That’ll be an object moving through space.
Now imagine putting a small rock on the sheet. Let’s say that’s a planet out in space. It’ll sink down into a bit of a pocket, right? That’s gravity affecting space.
You push the toy car past the rock.
* Maybe it just flies over the sunken-down rock and keeps going. That’s an object moving quickly enough to overcome the planet’s gravity and continue onwarde.
* Maybe it’s rolls down into sunken-down area that the rock is making, and instead of continuing in its straight line, it starts rolling around the sides of the pocked. That’s an object being pulled in by the planet’s gravity and starting to orbit it.
All good? OK.
Now imagine putting a magical marble on the sheet. This magical marble looks just like a normal marble, the same size as you’d expect…except it magically weighs a hundred tons. That magical marble isn’t just going to “sink down into a bit of a pocket”, right? When you put it on that stretchy sheet, the marble is gonna *slam* straight down to the ground. That’s our black hole.
Now push the toy car past the magical marble.
If that toy car gets anywhere near the marble, it’s heading straight down to it and it’s never coming back up. The pocket around the marble is *so* big and *so* deep that once something goes down there, it ain’t coming back. That’s how black holes work.
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