Beyond the Event Horizon

Black holes, once just seen as things of science fiction, now widely accepted to exist at the center of every galaxy.  They come in various sizes, from your common garden variety to the super-massive black holes believed to be millions the size of our own sun.

What are they?  Collapsed stars where the matter has become so dense that the gravitational pull even sucks in surrounding light, hence the name ‘black hole’.  They feed themselves by dragging in stars that stray to close, or merging with other black holes, but they are the cosmic vacuum cleaners of the universe and around them galaxies rotate waiting to be eventually sucked into the dark.

And now we come to the Event Horizon, the point around a black hole where nothing can ever escape.  Once past this point you are doomed to be crushed in the mass that exists there.  Compressed into the smallest form of your molecules.  But that said, beyond the event horizon, even the accepted laws of physics no longer exist.  Matter and energy are bent and warped, time itself may be redefined.  Inside the event horizon all rules are suspended and only our imagination can complete the blanks.  By definition, you cannot return from inside, the ultimate power in the universe can never be observed except at the ultimate price of non-return.  To look inside you must face destruction, the mystery must remain for ever.

Well that’s one way of looking at it.  Another way is to accept that without known rules there can be no defined results.  Who is to say that black holes are not linked like some cosmic underground system, to pass through means instant transport to the far reaches of the galaxy.   Anything is possible.  Maybe you are thrown out at a distant point in history, maybe all black holes lead to the start or the end of the universe.  Maybe black holes are gods, the event horizon protecting the peoples of the universe from knowing the ultimate truth.  Perhaps they are just some play thing of a race that sits outside our own , omnipotent to our eyes, but oblivious of our existence.  Who  is to say.

What I do know is they are pretty bloody interesting like so much of the cosmos, and that the more we discover, the more we have to learn about.

If you like what you have read, or have your own opinion to add, please comment below.  I would love to hear what you have to say!