Facing the Ultimate Unknowable

The concept of black holes consistently grips the human imagination. Many strange and frightening creatures and objects have been invented in mythology and fiction, and modern scientists have revealed a number of equally bizarre and disquieting things in the natural world. But none of these quite compares to the idea of the black hole an object whose gravitational pull is so great that even light cannot escape it, and a place where most of the normal laws of nature break down. In the words of noted physicist Kip Thorne, one of the world’s leading experts on black holes:

Of all the conceptions of the human mind, from unicorns to gargoyles to the hydrogen bomb, the most fantastic, perhaps, is the black hole: a hole in space with a definite edge into which anything can fall and out of which nothing can escape, a hole with a gravitational force so strong that even light is caught and held in its grip, a hole that curves space and warps time.

To many people, the very idea of such a cosmic monster on the loose seems like something out of a science fiction novel or movie. And yet, says Thorne, “well-tested laws of physics predict firmly that black holes exist. In our galaxy alone there may be millions.”