Black Hole Sun: Quasi-Stars

August 29, 2017

A Black Hole in Balance

Powered by matter falling into a black hole rather than by nuclear fusion, quasi-stars may have existed in the early universe.

What's Happening Here?

When matter falls into a black hole, it's stretched and warped to an extraordinary degree, heating up in the process and giving off a tremendous amount of energy. Usually, the outward pressure of this radiation is usually enough to blow away any surrounding clumps of matter—but if it's not, a quasi-star can form, balanced between the inward gravitational pull of its own mass (and the mass of the black hole) and the outward radiation pressure from matter crossing the event horizon.