Well, so far as I can see the only exotic thing about a black hole is the fact that it appears black.
All a black hole is, is a really dense piece of matter. Now, if you think about a star, that is really quite heavy, and as such has rather a lot of gravity. But, at distances that are many times the star's diameter, the gravity just doesn't seem that impressive anymore.
However, because a black hole is so dense, the gravity at many millions or billions of times it's diameter is still rather strong. So, it has a comparatively strong gravitational field. A black hole with the same mass as the Sun would only be a couple of km across, whereas the Sun is about 1 million km across (if I recall correctly).
Now, the second bit, which is the whole point of a black hole, is this gravitational field is so strong that the object's escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. Hence light doesn't escape, it appears black and so forth. Not everything gets sucked in so you get jets as well, which shoot out normal to the accretion disc at near-light speed. Not sure why exactly black holes do that, perhaps it is the stellar equivalent of dietary fibre?
There are suspected black holes of several billion solar masses at the core of a few galaxies, wouldn't want to get too near one of them! I wonder though, you could create a blackhole, point the jet in the direction you wish to travel, and use a sail-spacecraft to travel at relativistic speeds. Here to Alpha Centauri in no time. Of course, you would have to put up with the X-ray dose, and you might annoy anyone who lives around Alpha Centauri when you wipe out their entire population before you even get there.
All a black hole is, is a really dense piece of matter. Now, if you think about a star, that is really quite heavy, and as such has rather a lot of gravity. But, at distances that are many times the star's diameter, the gravity just doesn't seem that impressive anymore.
However, because a black hole is so dense, the gravity at many millions or billions of times it's diameter is still rather strong. So, it has a comparatively strong gravitational field. A black hole with the same mass as the Sun would only be a couple of km across, whereas the Sun is about 1 million km across (if I recall correctly).
Now, the second bit, which is the whole point of a black hole, is this gravitational field is so strong that the object's escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. Hence light doesn't escape, it appears black and so forth. Not everything gets sucked in so you get jets as well, which shoot out normal to the accretion disc at near-light speed. Not sure why exactly black holes do that, perhaps it is the stellar equivalent of dietary fibre?
There are suspected black holes of several billion solar masses at the core of a few galaxies, wouldn't want to get too near one of them! I wonder though, you could create a blackhole, point the jet in the direction you wish to travel, and use a sail-spacecraft to travel at relativistic speeds. Here to Alpha Centauri in no time. Of course, you would have to put up with the X-ray dose, and you might annoy anyone who lives around Alpha Centauri when you wipe out their entire population before you even get there.
