Baylor Rich

Tamara Young

PHYS 1040

11/22/2020

Astronomy Conversation

If you had an object the size of mount Everest, how small would you need to condense it

to make it so dense, that the Schwarzchild radius becomes small enough to create a black hole?

Well this question, among dozens of others, were set in place while answers were sought by a

group of highly trained Astronomers and Cosmologists who were searching among the stars to

find the answers to these important questions. Well, maybe not all of us are technically

“Astronomers”. In reality, the Astronomers who searched for the answers to these questions were

my best friend and my two brothers. our search among the stars didn’t actually take place under

the stars at all, it took place in my own bedroom. But although the situation may not be as

advanced as you would like. The answers we found to our important questions may be more

complex and ground-breaking than you may even realize.

Our first topic of discussion – Black holes. A black hole is created at the end of a

maddive star’s life. When the star gets big enough and hot enough, it eventually explodes into a

super nova. After the super nova, besides all the stellar gas and dust leftover from the initial

blast, all that is left over is a neutron star, which eventually collapses on itself to create a

blackhole. A black hole can be so incredibly dense that the gravitational pull of the star would be

so strong that it can bend space time and life itself cannot escape it’s pull.
 This was our first topic that we mainly discussed because we are young and like to skip

to the most exciting topics first. The answer found to the question above was our first question

that was asked and answered. Mount Everest is one of the most massive things on our planet, but

could it become condensed enough to create a black hole? The answer is, yes. But the size of this

enormous mountain would have to shrink to the size of a nanometer to create that much

gravitational force. This answer was found on a video titled Travel INSIDE a Black Hole, found

on YouTube. Because it was on YouTube which is not the most reliable source, we looked

further to find more evidence to this answer.

According to Researcher and Astronomer Fraser Cain, “They’re called black holes

because they emit no radiation. If you take any object and compress it down, there will be a point

that it becomes a black hole.” He further continues on The Schwarzchild radius “The term was

named after the mathematician Karl Schwarzschild, who first developed the formula: Rs = 2

GM/c2. M is the mass of the body, G is the universal constant of gravitation, and c is the speed

of light. You can use this formula to calculate the Schwarzschild radius of any object.” (Cain, 1).

So, in theory, if mount Everest could be condensed it would be incredibly small.

The conversation we had about black holes seemed to spark many thoughts and ideas, so

we continued to talk about whatever questions came to our minds at the time. Although this did

not follow the tight schedule I had planned for this discussion, it was almost expected, knowing

that the young and hyper minds of my brothers tend to wander almost more often then they stay

concentrated. Our next question to answer: How cold does it get in space?

We talked about temperature overall. How it is the measure of how fast the molecules are

moving in an object, and can differ depending on mass, velocity, and position. We also agreed

that most temperatures found outside our planet vary much more than the highs and lows we
experience on a day to day basis. For the most part, depending on where you are at, temperatures

are much higher than the hottest day on earth and much lower than the coldest.

One fact that we were surprised at from this topic was what is called “cold welding”.

Researcher Chris Higgins writes, “In space, if two metals come into contact, they can actually

fuse together without the need for heat or melting of either piece." (Higgins, 1). Cold Welding is

in fact welding and does not depending on it actually being cold. What it does depend on is the

metal being in a vacuum, thus we are able to do this type of welding on Earth as well.

While on the topic of vacuums and temperature, we came to a topic similar but different

to that of what we had discussed previously. We answered the question: is there fire in space?

The short answer is obviously no, because there is not oxygen in space. But what would fire look

like on a spacecraft that has enough oxygen for fire to use it as fuel? In an answer to this question

we looked at a unique article written by Tibi Puiu. He explains that fire is possible on a

spacecraft but looks very different from earth because of the change in gravity. “In microgravity,

there’s no updraft and oxygen is drawn into the flame through a completely different

mechanism.” (Puiu, 1). So Ultimately what happens is when the fuel burns, the hot air does not

rise, because there is not gravity, sot the flame essentially falls straight down and creates a

mushroom-looking shape. This was a surprising fact to learn and was actually very interesting to

look into. By learning about how fire reacts in space, we learned a little more about fires here in

our own world.

Overall, our astronomy conversation accomplished much. We were able to learn about

black holes, temperature in space, and fires. Each of this topics was very diverse from the last but

they all seemed to inter connect to each other. This conversation definitely deviated from what I

had originally planned, but it was interesting to see that we still accomplished the overall goal of
learning from each other and looking into our own research to find answers to questions that we

had. If any questions are raised again, we know that we could come together to find answers and

use each others knowledge to discovering something great.

Works Cited

Cain, Fraser. Schwarzschild Radius. 26 Apr. 2016,

www.universetoday.com/39861/schwarzschild-radius/.

Higgins, Chris “Cold Welding Metal in Space (Video).” Mental Floss, 30 Oct. 2016,
www.mentalfloss.com/article/88068/cold-welding-metal-space-video.

Puiu, Tibi. “How Fire Burns in Zero Gravity.” ZME Science, 21 Aug. 2018,
www.zmescience.com/science/physics/how-fire-burns-space-zero-gravity/.