Black Holes and their varying sizes.

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As I understand it black holes are infinitely dense. Yet some are larger because they’ve consumed more material than others.

So I’m confused because if they are infinitely dense shouldn’t they all be the same size? Or is infinity + a few hundred solar systems larger than just infinity? Maybe I just don’t understand infinity that well…

In: Planetary Science

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are a couple different parts of a black hole being described here.

The singularity: This is like the “bottom” of the hole. Everything that falls in ends up here and gets crushed into a single point (hence the name). Since all that stuff is crushed into something with no dimensions, density is infinite.

The event horizon: The boundary between “light can escape” and “light cannot escape”. It’s like the edge of the hole. This is based on the gravity created by the singularity, so it actually has a size. The more stuff is crammed into the singularity the stronger its gravity, and the bigger the event horizon.

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