8 Things You've Always Wanted To Know About Black Holes

8. How Black Holes Are Born

Usually star is maintained by the energy of radiation pushing against the gravity of the star's mass. The pressure from the radiation keeps the star from collapsing in on itself.

As fusion occurs, elements are created at the centre of the star. Hydrogen is fused into helium and this releases an enormous amount of energy that keeps the star stable. Really massive stars, however, will not stop at helium and will continue to form heavier and heavier elements.This is fine for a while, until eventually it gets to iron. The fusion process that forms iron doesn't emit enough energy to keep the star from collapsing and, as more and more iron builds up in the core, gravity starts to win the cosmic tug of war.

Often, the star will go supernova and turn into a neutron star but, sometimes, the gravity is so strong that it forgets to stop collapsing and it just gets smaller and smaller and denser and denser until reaching an infinitesimally small point.

This is a singularity, a term you've almost certainly heard before, but what actually is it?