Characteristics

Just like cars, stars need fuel to run. Cars can get filled up with more gas, but once a star runs out of fuel, it cannot get any more.

When this happens, the star changes. If it is a star about the same size as the sun, it becomes a much smaller star once it runs out of fuel. This kind of smaller star is called a "White Dwarf."

But, if it is a very big star, much bigger than the sun, the star collapses into a single tiny point. This single tiny point is so strong that it will suck in anything that gets too close, just like a vacuum cleaner. But this vacuum cleaner can suck up everything, even light!! This is why we cannot actually see a black hole, and why it is called black. But don't worry, you have to get very close to a black hole to be sucked in. This will never happen to the earth.

Think of a black hole as a pizza pie, but spherical rather than two dimensional. Singularity, the point of infinite curvature of space time is at the direct center of the pizza.

The Schwartzschild Radius is the length of a side on a slice of pizza. This distance would represent the distance from Singularity to the Event Horizion.

The Event Horizon, represented by the crust of the pizza, is the area of a black hole where the escape velocity equals the speed of light.