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Black Hole Facts for Kids

Explore our fun black hole facts for kids. Learn how they are formed, where they might be located, what an event horizon is and much more. Read on and enjoy a wide range of interesting information about black holes!

• Black holes are formed when massive stars reach the end of their life cycle and collapse.

• The gravity of black holes is so powerful that nothing can escape, not even light.

• The boundary of no escape from a black hole is known as the “event horizon”.

• Black holes grow by absorbing their surroundings.

• Supermassive black holes can form when black holes merge or stars are absorbed. Scientists believe that most galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their centre.

• The nearest black hole to earth is thought to be around 1,500 light-years away.

• There are thought to be millions of black holes in the Milky Way galaxy.

• The first ideas that led to our modern understanding of black holes came from a letter written in 1783 by English scientist John Mitchell, in which he calculated the properties of potential “dark stars”.

• Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity (1915) is an important foundation in our understanding of black holes.

• The term “black hole” wasn’t used to describe the phenomenon until the 1960s.

• The first black hole identified by researchers was in 1971, its name is “Cygnus X-1”.

• It is believed that a singularity lies at the centre of black holes, a point where matter is infinitely dense.