• Question: In a book I read that in the centre of a black hole there is an infinite density but how is that possible because e=mc2 says that as your speed increases your mass increases so the speed of light is impossible because you can't have an infinite mass so how can there be an infinite density???

    Asked by Matthew to Miranda on 22 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Miranda Jackson

      Miranda Jackson answered on 22 Jun 2015:


      Black holes are considered by mathematicians to be “point singularities”. What that means is that all the mass is considered to be located at one mathematical point, an infinitely small amount of space. Black holes behave as if that were true, but the mass is probably actually spread out a tiny bit more than that. As long as all the mass is contained within the event horizon, we do not know anything about how the mass is distrubuted inside the event horizon. There isn’t an infinite amount of mass, but the mass that is there can be considered to be gathered all at one point, so the density is infinite because the volume is essentially zero.

Comments