What is a Black Hole?

A black hole is one of the strangest objects in space. It is an area in space where gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape from it. Since light cannot escape from a black hole, it appears black. Light can travel faster than anything we know of - at a speed of 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second. If light cannot escape from a black hole, nothing else that we know of can. A black hole is not really a hole since it is not empty. In fact its extreme gravity comes from the fact that it has a lot of mass crammed into a very small volume. Since the pull of gravity from any object is determined by how much mass it has AND how close you can get to all of that mass; then, from far away, a black hole's gravitational pull is similar to other objects of the same mass, but, unlike other objects, you can get a lot closer to all that mass and, once you do, you will keep falling to its center and can never escape!