Do You Know?

What is the Universe?

• The Universe is everything that we can ever know - all of space and all of time.
• The Universe is almost entirely empty, with small clusters of matter and energy.
• The Universe is probably about 15 billion years old, but estimates vary. 
• The Universe is getting bigger by the second. We know this because all the galaxies are zooming away from us. The further away they are, the faster they are moving. 

What is the Black Holes?

• The Black Holes are places where gravity is so strong that it sucks everything in, including light.
• If you fell into a black hole, you'd stretch like spaghetti.
• Black holes form when a star or galaxy gets so dense that it collapses under the pull of its own gravity.
• Black holes may exist at the heart of every galaxy.
• Gravity shrinks a black hole to an unimaginably small point called a singularity. 
• Around a singularity, gravity is so intense that space-time is bent into a funnel.
• Matter spiralling into a black hole is torn apart and glows so brightly that it creates the brightest objects in the Universe called quasars.
• The swirling gases around a black hole turn it into an electrical generator, making it spout jets of electricity billions of kilometres out into space.
• The opposite of black holes may be white holes which spray out matter and light like fountains.