Black holes are a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. The idea of a black hole was proposed as early as 1783 by the amateur British astronomer, John Michell.
Ironically, Einstein himself did not believe in the existence of black holes, and he strongly resisted the idea, even though his own theory predicted them. The current consensus about black holes today is that they do exist, astronomers have detected them indirectly in enough different ways that there is little doubt of their existence.
A black hole is formed from a star that is at least 3 times the size of the star we know as The Sun. This giant star would then collapse in upon itself. This collapse also causes a supernova, or an exploding star, that blasts part of the star into space. This creates an infinitely dense object that has a gravity stronger than anything imaginable, nothing, not even light can escape the black holes pull once it is close enough, once anything is in what is called the event horizon(the area around the black hole which is inescapable). At its centre lies an infinitely small, infinitely dense, a kind of bottomless pit in space and time, a place where the normal laws of physics break down. As the comedian Steven Wright once remarked: “Black holes are where God divided by zero”.
