What term describes the stretching of an object into a long strand by a black hole’s tidal forces?
Answer
Spaghettification
80 Black Holes And The Universe Trivia Questions with Answers
80 public questions with answers, drawn from the well. How many can you answer?
For a nonrotating black hole, how far from the singularity is the photon sphere compared with the Schwarzschild radius?
Answer
1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius
What type of black hole is thought to power most active galactic nuclei?
Answer
Supermassive black hole
Which mechanism is named for Roger Blandford and Roman Znajek and can extract energy from a spinning black hole?
Answer
Blandford–Znajek process
What is the approximate temperature of a solar-mass black hole from Hawking radiation?
Answer
About 60 nanokelvins
Who coined the modern astronomical use of the term “black hole” in 1967?
Answer
John Archibald Wheeler
In 1963, which quasar became the first to be identified?
Answer
3C 273
What is the approximate age of the universe?
Answer
13.8 billion years
Which international telescope array produced the first image of a black hole in 2019?
Answer
Event Horizon Telescope
What is the approximate speed of gravitational waves traveling through empty space?
Answer
Speed of light
What is the name of the maximum mass a white dwarf can have before electron degeneracy pressure fails?
Answer
Chandrasekhar limit
What type of black hole usually forms when a massive star’s core collapses?
Answer
Stellar-mass black hole
What structure of orbiting hot gas commonly powers a bright black-hole X-ray source?
Answer
Accretion disk
About how massive is the Milky Way’s central black hole, measured in Suns?
Answer
4.3 million solar masses
Which English scientist proposed “dark stars” that could trap light in 1783?
Answer
John Michell
What boundary marks the point beyond which nothing can escape a black hole?
Answer
Event horizon
What process predicts that black holes can emit thermal radiation?
Answer
Hawking radiation
What is the name of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way?
Answer
Sagittarius A*