ScienceVerseLearning path: Black holes
The concepts to learn before Black holes, in order. Each step links to its page and, where one exists, its quiz.
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Your path
- Space-timeDirect prerequisite
Space-time is the single four-dimensional framework of three space dimensions and one time dimension in which every event happens. Einstein's general relativity explains gravity as the curving of space-time by mass and energy, which bends the paths of light and objects and makes clocks run at different rates. These predictions have passed every test so far, from the 1919 eclipse to the GPS satellites in your phone.
- Stellar evolutionDirect prerequisite
Stellar evolution is the life story of a star, from its collapse out of a cold cloud of gas and dust, through millions to billions of years of steady hydrogen fusion on the main sequence, to its end as a white dwarf, a neutron star or a black hole. A star's mass decides almost everything: how fast it uses its fuel, how long it lives, which elements it can build and how it dies.
- Black holesYour goal
A black hole is a huge amount of matter packed into so small a space that, inside the boundary called the event horizon, nothing — not even light — can escape. Black holes form when the cores of very massive stars collapse, and supermassive ones sit at the centres of most large galaxies. Although they give out no light themselves, they have been detected through orbiting stars, X-rays, gravitational waves and, since 2019, images of their shadows.