Science and Science Fiction
Some slides concerning black holes.

Black Holes -- basics
Nothing can stop collapse after neutron pressure fails
Escape velocity from a surface at radius R:
As R shrinks (but M is fixed), Vescape gets larger and larger
At some point VEscape= c  (speed of light)
Happens at Schwarzschild radius:
Not even light can escape from within this radius

Examples:
The Schwarzschild Radius:
Mass in solar masses Rs (km)
10 30
3 9
2 6
1 3
0.000003 (Earth) 0.9 cm

Black Holes -- details
Remember – gravity is same as before, away from mass
Black holes do NOT necessarily pull all nearby material in
A planet orbiting a new black hole would just keep on orbiting as before (assuming the ejected material or radiated energy didn’t have an effect)
Any mass can potentially be made into a black hole – if you can compress it to a size smaller than RS = 2GM/c2
1 MSun: 3.0 km        106 MSun 3´106 km         1 MEarth 8.9 mm

Black Holes -- details
If you do make material fall into a black hole, material will be falling at close to the speed of light when it reaches RS
If that falling gas collides with and heats other gas before it reaches RS, then light from that hot material (outside RS) can escape (important in quasars!).

Black Holes – detection
By definition – can’t see light from black hole itself
Can see large amounts of energy released by falling material just before it crosses RS
Can see motion of nearby objects caused by gravity of black hole

Black Holes – detection
Example: Like White Dwarf accretion disk but w/ black hole instead
Gas from red giant companion spills over towards black hole
Gas spirals in toward black hole, through accretion disk
Gas will be much hotter because it falls further, to very small RS
Gas will be moving at very high velocity
Much faster than with white dwarf since much closer  (P2 µ a3)
Signature of black hole:  Very high energy release, very high velocity
We find MASSIVE black holes in centers of most galaxies

Cygnus X-1

The Nucleus of the Galaxy
Likely Black hole
High velocities
Large energy generation
At  a=275 AU  P=2.8 yr Ţ 2.7 million solar masses
Radio image of Sgr A
about 3 pc across, with model of surrounding disk

A movie of stars at the core
www.mpe.mpg.de/www_ir/GC
Very cool, and worth a look!
This is the best evidence to date for a massive black hole at the Galactic core.  Now essentially “proven.”

More Cool Stuff About Black Holes
Time Dilation – originally “Frozen Stars”
Gravitational Redshift
Wicked Tidal Forces
Hawking Radiation
Gravitational Lensing on small scales.