Peering into the Dark

Mercury, March/April 2004 Table of Contents

Illustration courtesy of CXC and A. Hobart

by Catherine Garland

The evidence for the existence of black holes is overwhelming, and these bizarre objects—likely ranging in size from teeny to titanic—may even lurk inside the debris of particle collisions in an eagerly awaited particle accelerator.

A black hole is a region of space where the force of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Einstein’s own Theory of General Relativity, formulated in 1915, predicted that such extraordinary regions could exist when, for example, massive stars collapsed. However, such things seemed so peculiar that Einstein did not believe in them. It did not seem to him, and to many other prominent scientists at the time, that the Universe should behave in such a strange way.

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