• Question: if the speed of light is the fastest thing how come it get sucked into a black hole and hoe come diagram of black holes are flat when space is not flat?

    Asked by to Bethany, Hannah, Keith, Peter, Ramya on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Hannah Tanner

      Hannah Tanner answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      I don’t know anything about black holes – I’m not that sort of scientist. Maybe you could ask someone from the Astronomy zone: https://astronomyj14.imascientist.org.uk/

    • Photo: Bethany Dearlove

      Bethany Dearlove answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Like Hannah, I’m no expert in black holes – they were one of the things I found most mind-boggling in science at school. I think this article seems to do a good job of explaining them though: http://mattforte.hubpages.com/hub/Why-Does-Light-Get-Sucked-Into-Black-Holes.

      As for why diagrams of them are flat, I have no idea! Maybe it’s just something to do with the limitations of drawing in 2D.

    • Photo: Peter Elliott

      Peter Elliott answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      The gravitational pull from a black hole is so immense not even light can escape. Light is indeed the fastest thing we know of but it is still affected by gravitation fields. The force of a black hole literally pulls light into its centre so that we do not see it.

      At the moment I don’t think we actually know the shape of a black hole as we cannot see them (as they suck in all the light around them). It is possible it could be a sphere, doughnut or cylinder shape, but the chances of it being flat are very slim.

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