In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. A black hole has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, but it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around the time of alignment, extreme gravitational lensing of the galaxy is observed.Ī black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light and other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. For other uses, see Black hole (disambiguation).ĭirect radio image of a supermassive black hole at the core of Messier 87 Animated simulation of a Schwarzschild black hole with a galaxy passing behind.