Black holes
If the core remnant of a supernova exceeds about two solar masses, it continues to contract. The gravitational field of the collapsing star is predicted to be so powerful that neither matter nor light can escape it. The remnant then collapses to a black hole—a singularity, or point of zero volume and infinite density hidden by an event horizon at a distance called the Schwarzschild radius, or gravitational radius. Bodies crossing the event horizon, or a beam of light directed at such an object, would seemingly just disappear—pulled into a “bottomless pit.”
The existence of black holes is well established, both on a stellar scale, such as exists in the binary system Cygnus X-1, and on a scale of millions or billions of solar masses at the centre of some galaxies, such as M87. (See quasar.)
Lawrence Hugh Aller Eric J. Chaisson John Donald Fernie Kenneth Brecher