Black Holes

""A black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping.[1] The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that marks the point of no return. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits the horizon, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics."" Thank-You Wikipedia.

""Black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings. By absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes, super-massive black holes of millions of solar masses may form. There is general consensus that super-massive black holes exist in the centers of most galaxies."" Thank-You again Wikipedia.

Black holes are thought to form when a star supernovas and then begins to collapse upon itself because of it's strong inherent gravitational field. As it "packs" itself tighter and tighter it gravitational force increases and begins to pull matter and energy in from surrounding area's. The more it pulls in, the larger and more dense it becomes, thus exerting more force to pull in more matter and energy. This is what they term "feeding" and a few of the pictures depict it. It is believed that a massive or super-massive black hole can "feed" upon other black holes also.

These pictures are, as in my Supernova list, either actual from our telescopes or artists renditions. I have included some pictures with limited explanations, but we seem to know very little of the phenomena and every answer sparks dozens of new questions.

Of particular interest to me is answering the following question; If a black hole has a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape from it and it is capable of warping spacetime into it, how can a highly energetic high speed extragalactic jet of energy (plasma) be emitted and escape? Anyhow, it may be of interest to know that if one of these jets were to hit our planet earth it is thought that it would overpower our magnetic field and strip the atmosphere off of our planet, thus leaving it barren and lifeless.

Just a thought. :)