I love space. Just thinking about the vastness of it blows my mind. When I was a youngling, I wanted to be an astronomer. And then I found out how much math is involved, and math, as you know, is hard. Still, I can consider the sheer awesomeness of our universe as an amateur.
Sorry if you’re getting tired of space facts but, space is amazing.
One thing I find particularly amazing, and terrifying, are black holes. If you don’t know much about black holes, they are astronomical bodies whose gravity are so strong that not even light can escape their gravitational pull (hence the name). At the heart of a black hole is what’s called a singularity, a single point where all the matter of the black hole is crushed in upon itself, creating a point of incredibly dense mass (some would say infinite mass). The gravity from the singularity pulls in surrounding matter, including light. The perimeter around the singularity where light can no longer escape is called the event horizon, and gives the black hole its appearance.
See? Space is crazy!
Bonus Fun Fact: Our galaxy spins around a black hole at its center, a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* (pronounced Sagittarius A-star). Sagittarius A* is about 26,000 light years from Earth, and is approximately 4 million times as massive as our Sun, with all its mass being packed into a single point in space. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the scale of it, but I know its magnificent.
If you want to learn more, NASA has some great articles about Sagittarius A* and black holes in general. It’s fun and mind-blowing stuff!
Jason E. Andersen 
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