Could Life Exist Around Black Holes?

They warp time and space, but could they also nurture life?

- Nigel Watson

From the coldest to the hottest regions, life on Earth has filled every conceivable ecological niche. It’s very likely life has evolved elsewhere, though despite our best efforts we haven’t seen any signs of it yet. What is truly amazing is that scientists have speculated that life could exist on planets in the neighbourhood of black holes.

Black holes are the most extreme and awe-inspiring objects in the universe. At the centre of virtually every galaxy, including our own Milky Way, resides a menacing black hole that greedily consumes everything that falls into it – from vast dust clouds and planets to whole solar systems.

In the early evolution of galaxy formation, stellar material spinning around black holes formed flattened accretion discs billions of times the mass of our Sun, and great jets of gas-fired out from them. These jets are like powerful beacons, 1,000 times brighter than our Milky Way, and are known as quasars. Much of the gas that fuelled quasars has run out in mature galaxies, but quasars can still be observed in very distant young galaxies.

The black hole itself is formed when a massive star has exhausted all its hydrogen and helium gases, causing it to violently explode and triggering its inner core to collapse in on itself. The outermost region of the black hole is the event horizon, and beyond that point the escape velocity to get out of the hole’s gravitational pull is greater than the speed of light. Therefore nothing can escape this point of infinite density, known as the singularity.

If you do fall into a black hole it is a gruesome experience, as the intense gravitational field of the singularity will pull you into a long, thin strand. This process is rather aptly called spaghettification. Any object can be spaghettified, including entire stars.