Black hole evaporation Black hole evaporation Imagine being a space traveller of the future - your ship is disabled, drifting off course and you re working at fever pitch to repair navigation and communications because you know you re dangerously close to a black hole. If you keep drifting your ship will be drawn into its intense gravitational pull. Black holes were first mentioned in the year 1783 by British astronomer, John Mitchell, but his theories were largely poo-pooed by the scientific community as ridiculous or impossible. The simplest definition of a black hole is - a cosmic body, in most cases a dying star, that generates intense gravity from which nothing can escape, not even light.
All stars eventually burn out and die when their source of fuel runs out.
Our sun is a star and in about 8-9 billion years its fuel tank will run dry. As it begins to cool the sun will collapse in on itself, or implode. This cataclysmic reaction will happen in a matter of seconds and create what is known as a white dwarf . In stars that are larger than our sun there is an alternate reaction. Once they self-destruct, in this case exploding outwards, they become even smaller than a white dwarf and are typically known as a blinding white mass called a supernova .