The Untold Truth Of Black Holes

Once a star is on its way to becoming a black hole, there's pretty much no stopping it. According to Discover, the core of the giant star continues to collapse, getting smaller and smaller until it's really, really tiny. Not mouse tiny or even bumblebee tiny, but smaller than an atom tiny. Smaller than an electron tiny. In fact, the core — known as a "singularity" — eventually shrinks down to the smallest unit that's possible to measure. Physicists call this a "plank length," which is roughly 100 quintillionth the size of a proton.

So the "hole" as we think of it — that part that Hollywood spaceships are always getting sucked into — isn't the part where all of the mass resides. Instead, it's simply the point of no return or the line you don't want to cross. Called "the event horizon," once you step into it, you're doomed. There's no turning back, there's no escape, you're officially a victim of the black hole.

The event horizon isn't a hole, though, despite the persistence of the name. It's not a funnel, either, nor is it toilet-bowl shaped. The event horizon is actually shaped like a sphere, which makes black holes kind of the opposite of holes. So contrary to that story you wrote in the fourth grade, you cannot evade a black hole by flying under it, because black holes are a full 360 degrees of inescapable death.

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