7

Black Holes

7.1 INTRODUCTION

A black hole is a region of space–time that has so much mass concentrated in it that gravity is so strong that not even light signal can escape its gravitational pull. It is believed that black holes form at the end of a star’s lifetime when a massive star runs short of fuel and collapses. Incidentally, the name black hole was suggested by John Archibald Wheeler and being much catchier, seems to have stuck. Before Wheeler, these objects were referred to as ‘frozen stars.’

In the collapse of a dying star to a black hole, all the information about the collapsing star is lost, such as its shape and the stuff it was made of. However, the information, which is not wiped out, is its mass, charge and angular momentum. ...

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