Mind-blowing ‘world first’ images of black hole spewing out plasma 5.5BILLION lightyears away revealed

Here's what you need to know...

What is a black hole?

• A black hole is a region of space where absolutely nothing can escape
• That's because they have extremely strong gravitational effects, which means once something goes into a black hole, it can't come back out
• They get their name because even light can't escape once it's been sucked in – which is why a black hole is completely dark

What is an event horizon?

• There has to be a point at which you're so close to a black hole you can't escape
• Otherwise literally everything in the universe would have been sucked into one
• The point at which you can no longer escape from a black hole's gravitational pull is called the event horizon
• The event horizon varies between different black holes, depending on their mass and size

What is a singularity?

• The gravitational singularity is the very centre of a black hole
• It's a one-dimensional point that contains an incredibly large mass in an infinitely small space
• At the singularity, space-time curves infinitely and the gravitational pull is infinitely strong
• Conventional laws of physics stop applying at this point

How are black holes created?

• Most black holes are made when a supergiant star dies
• This happens when stars run out of fuel – like hydrogen – to burn, causing the star to collapse
• When this happens, gravity pulls the centre of the star inwards quickly, and collapses into a tiny ball
• It expands and contracts until one final collapse, causing part of the star to collapse inward thanks to gravity, and the rest of the star to explode outwards
• The remaining central ball is extremely dense, and if it's especially dense, you get a black hole