Black holes are possibly the most famous of all the stellar phenomena. Probably because they are so mysterious and their truth eludes us. We will never be able to actually see a black hole with the naked eye, but through experiments we can be relatively sure that they do exist.
             The actual Definition of a black hole is kind of sketchy, but most people say that they are just a non-dimensional (or very small diameter) singularity (A singularity is "a point in space-time in which the space-time curvature becomes infinite"). (A Brief History of Time, 186) surrounded by a kind of membrane called its event horizon. The event horizon is simply the boundary of a black hole. More specifically, it is the sphere around the black hole inside which nothing can pass without being inevitably eaten by the hole. By any definition, a black hole is a point in space in which time and space are so distorted that they form a never-ending infinite loop. This is caused by the immense gravitational effects resulting after a massive star has died.
             Not just any star can die and become a black hole. The mass of the star, before it starts its death cycle, has to be above a certain limit. This is called the Chandrasekhar limit. (It is named for Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar; an Indian that worked closely with Sir Arthur Eddington, an expert on the subject of general relativity.) "Chandrasekhar calculated that a cold star of more than about one and a half times the mass of the sun would not be able to support itself against its own gravity." (A Brief History of Time, 82) Therefore, anything larger would, more than likely, collapse into a black hole.
             "Though we cannot 'see' a black hole itself (since not even light can escape the hole's gravitational field), we may see the hole's effects on nearby matter. For example, if gas from a nearby star were sucked towards the black hole, the intense gravitation a...