Do you know the 5 things that make black holes terrifying for humans on Earth? Know now

Black holes by their very definition, generate fear and dread in humanity. With reason. There is so much about black holes that is fearful, that it even puts the fictionalised horror stories and films in shade. Black holes are out there in space and they have the ability to swallow anything and everything that comes into their path - from stars to galaxies. The scale at which these black holes operate means that the Earth is just a tiny rock hanging in space in comparison. In fact, even our very own Sun is small when compared to black holes, which themselves come in various sizes. The bigger the galaxy they reside in, the bigger the black holes found there, according to NASA. Terrifyingly for humanity, there is a big black hole suspected to be at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy itself.

In fact, they are the exact opposite of what our Diwali stands for. While Diwali is the festival of lights, black holes are nothing but spreaders of darkness as even light cannot escape from their clutches once they have been caught.

What is a black hole?

NASA explains it this way, "A black hole is an astronomical object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it."

Top 5 things that really make a black hole scary

1. The process itself of the formation of a black hole is horrifying. A black hole forms when a star with more than 20 solar masses exhausts the nuclear fuel in its core and collapses under its own weight.

2. The collapse triggers a supernova explosion that blows off the star’s outer layers. This spreads outwards and destroys everything in its path.

3. A black hole has the power to suck in every object that comes near its area of influence. It destroys everything that it swallows. Once born, black holes can grow by accreting matter that falls into them

4. The laws of physics as we know them do not exist in black holes. Everything that we are familiar with on Earth that we can touch, feel, see and deduce from experiments, works according to certain laws of physics, but not black holes.

5. Yes there is a black hole near Earth. NASA says that stellar-mass black holes with "three to dozens of times the Sun’s mass are spread throughout our Milky Way galaxy."