• Question: how blackholes are formed

    Asked by wear1jete on 18 Sep 2025.
    • Photo: Sandra Raimundo

      Sandra Raimundo answered on 18 Sep 2025:

      The smaller black holes are formed when a very big star dies. The star collapses and forms a black hole. For the bigger black holes, called ‘supermassive’, we are still not sure how they were formed

    • Photo: Emily Walls

      Emily Walls answered on 18 Sep 2025:

      Black holes form from when stars become unstable towards the end of their lives and collapse due to their struggle against gravity.

    • Photo: Ieva Jankute

      Ieva Jankute answered on 22 Sep 2025:

      Black holes are what is left after the “death” of the most massive stars in the Universe. The stars need to be massive enough for this to happen. Our Sun, for example, will not become a black hole as it is not massive enough and will instead end up as a tiny fading star, called a white dwarf. But if a star is at least 20 times as massive as our Sun, it will keep burning all of its fuel and shining bright up until the very last moment when there’s no more fuel left, and the star explodes into a beautiful and colourful supernova with a black hole at the very centre.

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