The Best Guide for the SO23 Area

Though we can't see black holes in the traditional sense, we know they exist because of the telltale signs they emit. The Swift space telescope detects gamma-ray bursts that erupt when a black hole is formed after a large star dies in a massive explosion called a supernova. In Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity, we learn what triggers this chain of events is gravity, a force so powerful at its most extreme that it can actually warp the fabric of the cosmos.

© Denver Museum of Nature & Science

The Formation of Stellar Mass Black Holes Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity leads us through the process of black hole formation by focusing on a particular class of stars called red supergiants. Much more massive than our sun, these stars lead short violent lives, truncated by the crush of gravity. The star's core becomes so dense and massive that it collapses in on itself. The ensuing catastrophe powers a titanic supernova explosion that rocks the cosmos. Left in its wake is a black hole, an object more massive than the sun, yet concentrated into a volume millions of times smaller-literally a puncture in the fabric of the cosmos. The gravity of the black hole is so intense, resisting it would be like trying to paddle against the current of a river plunging toward a waterfall. Anything that crosses the black hole's point of no return, or event horizon, cannot escape.

Supermassive Black Holes Though these regular black holes seem fearsome enough, there are others that are even more immense and mind-boggling. These supermassive black holes are millions to billions of times more massive than our sun. Scientists now believe these supermassive black holes exist in the centers of galaxies. Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity shows us how these supermassive black holes form, and how astronomers have detected the presence of one at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy by studying the behavior of the stars around it.

© Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Travel Inside the Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way What if we could take a trip into the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way? It's a physical impossibility for humans, but for the first time Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity creates this journey with scientific accuracy, using a course plotted by the observations of astronomers, and the equations of Einstein to take us there. What we find is a bizarre realm, a maelstrom of light, matter and energy unlike anything we've ever seen or experienced before.