I don’t know a lot about Space, or astrophysics, or science in general really, but that’s never stopped me from trying to think about it or trying to write about it, at least in small fragments anyway.
Black holes are really interesting. Figuratively we often use Black Holes as way in which to represent a vacuous void of emptiness and absence, but really nothing could be further from the truth. Black Holes are anything but vacant or unoccupied. One of the defining features of a Black Hole is that it contains a disproportionately large amount of mass in comparison to its size. Even a Black hole with the scale of an atom can hold an amount of mass equivalent to that of a mountain.
The other defining feature of a Black Hole occurs as a result of the first. Because they contain such an extremely large amount of mass condensed into a small space, Black Holes are places of immense and overwhelming gravity.
Unsurprisingly, I now realize that pretty much everything I know and understand about Black Holes can be consolidated into those few brief paragraphs above, and more than likely I haven’t told you anything you didn’t already know.
But, maybe that in itself is an example of what a Black hole is and what it does. It is a place where rich complexity becomes densely packed, where the tremendous mass of something ineffable is expressed within and amidst something comparably infinitesimal, places with such great force and gigantic gravity that we are inescapably pulled toward them and into them, places that are capable of capturing, containing, holding, and harboring light.
They are bigger on the inside.
Perhaps, I’m romanticizing Black Holes; that’s fair, I’m a writer, not a physicist, and that’s just what we do.
To be sure, Black Holes are dangerous and scary; perhaps, the scariest thing in the universe. It pulls apart everything that falls into it and never lets it go.
But, then again, perhaps, we could say the same thing about love…