Can black holes “eat” matter indefinitely or is there a limit? Do they ever have trouble absorbing large masses or is it always the same?
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The best way to think of a black hole *isnt* as an endless void that eats things. It’s more like a dark star – no light comes from it but it’s still just a big, heavy object in space. Its way more dense than a star so it can have much higher gravity than a star of the same size, but it’s still just a big ol’ hunk of space stuff.
So then think of how things work with our sun. It’s big, it’s got lots of gravity, but does it suck everything into it? Not really. At least not on time scales we’re used to. Things tend to get caught in orbits around it. The orbits can be fairly stable unless there’s something slowing us down.
Black holes work like that.
Do things fall into black holes? Sure. If the space around a black hole’s event horizon (the point where going past it results in not even light being able to escape the gravity) is particularly full of stuff that has gotten trapped in orbit, those things can collide with each other, lose some speed, and their new orbit can take them into the black hole.
Is there a limit of how much stuff can do that? Not really. Black holes can get really really big. Galaxies are groups of billions and billions of stars orbiting “Super Massive” black holes.
The limit is basically “how much ya got?” – how much stuff comes into range and ends up falling into it instead of orbiting it. Black holes can even merge with other black holes!
IANAAstronomer, Astrophysicist, or really anything with Astro in the name. I just watch a lot of Dr. Becky’s YouTube channel and she *loves* black holes.
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