Islamic Scientific Schools

In the Name of Allah---the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. Theoretical Foundations and Discovery In 1939, J. Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues predicted the existence of an    astronomical  phenomenon even more extreme than neutron stars: black holes. These entities form when a star with more than 3.2 times the mass of our sun collapses beyond the neutron star stage, creating a singularity with a gravitational field so intense that not even light can escape. The term “black hole” was coined in the 1960s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler to describe these objects, which can be visualized as infinitely deep “holes” in space. Formation and Rarity Only about one in a thousand stars is massive enough to potentially become a black hole. However, many of these stars may lose enough mass during a supernova explosion to avoid this fate. Despite this, the sheer number of stars in the galaxy means that millions of black holes could exist. Detecting them, however, ...