black holes

Black holes are mysterious objects in space that are made up of a huge amount of matter squeezed into a very small area. They are so dense that not even light can escape their gravitational pull. Think of a black hole like a giant vacuum cleaner in space, sucking up all the stars, gas and dust around it, and nothing can escape its gravitational pull. A black hole can be as small as an atom or as large as a million times bigger than the sun. Imagine that you’re holding a basketball in your hands. Now imagine that all of the mass of the basketball (all of the material it’s made of) is squished into a single point the size of the period at the end of this sentence. That’s a black hole! Fun fact: Black holes aren’t actually black! They actually appear to be white when they emit high-energy radiation and particles.