Facts about black holes, neutron stars, supernovae, and other stellar remnants. Front: the term or object. Back: a one to two sentence explanation.
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- Black hole
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A region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape due to extreme gravitational force. It forms when massive stars collapse at the end of their lives.- Event horizon
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The boundary around a black hole from which nothing can escape. Light crossing this boundary cannot travel outward.- Schwarzschild radius
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The distance from a black hole's center that defines the size of its event horizon. For Earth's mass, this radius would be about 9 millimeters.- Singularity
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The point at the center of a black hole where all its mass is theoretically compressed to infinite density. The laws of physics break down at this point.- Neutron star
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An extremely dense remnant of a massive star left after a supernova. One teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh about 6 billion tons on Earth.- Pulsar
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A rotating neutron star that emits regular beams of electromagnetic radiation. These beams sweep across space like a lighthouse beam.- Supernova
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The explosive death of a star that briefly makes it as luminous as an entire galaxy. A single supernova can outshine billions of ordinary stars.- Type Ia supernova
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An explosion in a binary system where a white dwarf steals material from a companion star until it reaches critical mass. This produces a thermonuclear explosion.- Type II supernova
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An explosion caused by the core collapse of a massive star at the end of its life. The iron core implodes and then rebounds outward violently.- White dwarf
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The dense remnant left behind after a star like the Sun dies. Electron degeneracy pressure prevents it from collapsing further.- Chandrasekhar limit
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The maximum mass a white dwarf can have, approximately 1.4 solar masses. Exceeding this mass causes the star to collapse into a neutron star.- Hawking radiation
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Electromagnetic radiation emitted by black holes due to quantum effects near the event horizon. This causes black holes to gradually lose mass and eventually evaporate.- Accretion disk
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A disk of material spiraling into a black hole or neutron star due to gravity. The material heats up through friction and emits X-rays.- Cygnus X-1
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A binary system containing a black hole and a blue supergiant star. It was the first black hole ever detected, identified by X-ray observations.- Sagittarius A*
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The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It contains approximately 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun.
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