What effect shifts light to longer wavelengths as it escapes a black hole's gravity?
Answer
Gravitational redshift
79 Black Holes Trivia Questions with Answers
79 public questions with answers, drawn from the well. How many can you answer?
What spherical zone around a black hole can contain circular photon orbits?
Answer
Photon sphere
Which NASA X-ray observatory launched in 1999 studies black holes?
Answer
Chandra X-ray Observatory
What popular term describes extreme stretching by a black hole's tidal forces?
Answer
Spaghettification
What disk of hot matter can form as gas spirals into a black hole?
Answer
Accretion disk
Which German physicist gave his name to the radius of a non-rotating black hole?
Answer
Karl Schwarzschild
At a black hole's event horizon, the escape velocity equals what?
Answer
Speed of light
What boundary around a black hole marks the point beyond which light cannot escape?
Answer
Event horizon
What is the maximum mass limit for a neutron star before collapsing into a black hole?
Answer
Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit
What process can extract energy from a rotating black hole?
Answer
Penrose process
What paradox arises from the conflict between quantum mechanics and black hole physics?
Answer
Information paradox
What theorem states that a black hole's event horizon area never decreases?
Answer
Black hole area theorem
What is the term for a black hole with no charge and no spin?
Answer
Schwarzschild black hole
What phenomenon is produced when two black holes merge and ripple spacetime?
Answer
Gravitational waves
What is the approximate mass of Sagittarius A* in solar masses?
Answer
4.1 million solar masses
What is the process by which black holes emit particles and slowly lose mass?
Answer
Hawking radiation
What telescope network captured the first image of a black hole?
Answer
Event Horizon Telescope
What type of black hole is formed from the collapse of a giant star?
Answer
Stellar black hole
What is the theoretical point of infinite density at a black hole's center?
Answer
Singularity
What is the name of the first black hole confirmed to exist?
Answer
Cygnus X-1
What is the name of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way?
Answer
Sagittarius A*