Soon after Einstein revealed his great general theory of relativity in 1915, physicists realized that it allowed for the possibility of catastrophic gravitational collapse. In places of extreme density like the dead core of a massive star, space and time could be dragged inwards to create a hole in the universe: a boundary in spacetime called an event horizon that could be entered, but from beyond which nothing could return. Once formed, there was nothing in theory or imagination that could bring material consumed back to the outside universe. These black holes should exist forever – only growing, never shrinking.
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