• Question: what is at the bottom of a black hole?

    Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Naomi Osborne

      Naomi Osborne answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Good question – and the answer is that we don’t know. As not even light escapes being sucked in by a black hole, we’ll probably never find out what’s inside!

    • Photo: Edward Hughes

      Edward Hughes answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Nobody really knows at the moment, but there are lots of theories. A popular one says that the inside of a black hole is actually a fuzzy mess of strings! One reason we don’t understand the bottom of a black hole is that you need a theory of gravity at very small scales, which we haven’t discovered yet.

      Actually things *can* escape from black holes! This was discovered by the famous scientist Stephen Hawking. He realised that black holes actually evaporate over time. Unfortunately we’ve never detected a black hole evaporating, because it happens very slowly.

      One day we might be able to see a black hole burn up, and that would give us clues as to what happens deep inside.

      By the way, you are exactly right to think about falling towards the bottom of a black hole! Gravity is trying to pull you towards the bottom of a “potential well”. My hunch is that this well doesn’t really have a bottom – it gets kind of fuzzy once you’re far enough down!

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