Why does a black hole suck things in?

Answer 1

Suck in isn't quite right. Because relativity says gravity bends space and time, like a tightly stretched sheet, a black hole is like a a very large and thin pole pushed into the sheet - it makes a kind of "bottom of the hill" or a valley in space. Things in space will flow to the lowest "point" of space, which the is end of a black hole. So things fall in rather than are sucked in.

Answer 2

If you think as space as a flat surface a black hole would look like a funnel and things would be drawn twords it. Also when you reach the black hole time would stop and you would die at the same time.

Answer 3

A black hole is a gravitational singularity which is formed when a massive star runs out of fuel. It's core mass exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit which is the upper limit of electron degeneracy pressure and collapses, if its mass also exceeds the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, which is the upper limit of neutron degeneracy pressure, the core will fully collapse forever. At a point in the collapse, it passes its Schwarzchild radius which is the point where its gravity is so strong that escape velocity exceeds the speed of light.

Unlike in movies, it is not easy to accidentally wander too close to a black hole and become stuck because the Schwarzchild radius isn't nearly as large as they depict and the black hole's gravity outside the Schwarzchild radius is no different than its gravity was when it was still a star and in fact there's a good chance it will have less gravity because it loses mass in the supernova.

Answer 4

This is because a black hole is a collapsed star. When some of the biggest stars in the universe die, they will turn into a supernova and explode, most of the time leaving a small, dense neutron star, which is all that is left of it. However, if the supernova is big enough, then the body that remains from the supernova can sometimes be so dense, that its gravity literally collaspes on itself, and matter starts to be sucked into what's left, forming a destructive black hole.

Answer 5

By its gravity. This is not much different, in principle, from our Sun or a planet "sucking things up" - if a meteor falls on Earth, it will basically stay there, and if a comet crashes into the Sun, it will be destroyed, but its mass will stay there.

Answer 6

Black holes suck things up because they have such a high gravitational pull, that nothing can escape from it. Therefore, everything that goes into a black hole never comes out.

Answer 7

They have such an immense gravitational pull that they can't help but pull things in. When something enters the Event Horizon of a black hole there is no way of escaping its pull.

Answer 8

For the same reason that the Sun, Jupiter, or Earth "suck up" - because of their gravity, which results from their mass.

Answer 9

For the same reason our Sun, or Jupiter, "sucks stuff in" - as a result of their gravity. This, in turn, is a result of their mass.