by their gravitational influence. For example, at the center of the Milky Way, we see an empty spot where all the stars are circiling around as if they were orbiting a really dense mass. That's where the black hole is. The second way is by observing the matter falling into the black hole. As matter falls in, it settles in a disk around the black hole which can get very hot. Some of the energy liberated from falling in is turned into light, which we can then see, for example in X-rays. cloudGeek: They say the theory of relativity breaks down at the point of singularity, but I've always thought that there really is no such thing as a point of singularity, because if you were in the center of a black hole the dense matter on all sides of you would be pulling you and the forces would cancel out... so there really is no spot where r (radius) equals zero... what are your thoughts? Ezequiel: Mathematically, there are singularities at the centers of black holes, however, they are all inside the "event horizons", which means that physically nothing can get there... This is an idea in astronomy: There are no "naked" singularities... Not everything that is mathematically allowed happens physically natasha_qurban: is there any blackhole in our solar system riyanatarajan: There is no evidence for the presence of a black in our solar system. However there is a super massive one in the center of Milky Way (our