Question: how do black holes work

Ieva Jankute answered on 22 Sep 2025:

They lurk around in the centre of galaxies, and they may or may not be visible to us.

There are inactive black holes that are not “feeding” on the nearby gas or stars, and we can only guess that they exist if we observe stars orbiting around some invisible dark object. The black holes themselves are invisible, since their gravitational pull is so strong that past a certain point, called the event horizon, not even light can escape and reach us.

Then there are the active black holes that do “feed” on what is in their nearby environment. By doing so, they not only grow bigger, but also reveal themselves to us astronomers since then we can observe with telescopes the gas spinning around the black hole!