Why dont black holes suck up all of space?

Question

If all they do is take light, other objects in, and never die, why don't they take in all of space?

Answer 1

because their range is not infinite. if light happens to get too close it will be pulled in as will anything else, but the same could be said for our sun. a black hole that weighs the same amount as our sun would have the same gravitational influence as our sun does.

in other words if our sun was replaced with a black hole of equal mass the planet's orbits would stay the same the only change would be that we would get no light.

so no worries aobut a black hole taking over the universe... at least not for a very very very long time.

Answer 2

Because "take in light" is not all they do. It isn't even an important part of what they do IMO.

The main thing to remember is that gravity gets weaker very quickly with distance. The gravity of the black hole may be strong enough to prevent light from escaping from a close distance, but 10 times farther away, it is 100 times weaker and 1,000 times farther away it is a million times weaker.

Stuff (except light) that falls onto Earth is trapped forever too you know. It is only recently that humans have invented rockets that can take a small amount of mass off the Earth, but except for that, any wandering dust or meteor, or even space craft with no fuel that falls onto Earth is trapped there forever. And people without access to a rocket are trapped forever on Earth. Earth doesn't "suck stuff in", stuff just falls here, if it happens to get too close. A black hole is no different. Its gravity is only unusually strong at VERY close distances. At farther distances, a black hole's gravity behaves just like any other star or planet. Things can and do orbit black holes just like Earth orbits the Sun.

Answer 3

In theory, the black holes will gain their way in time. The black holes continually increase in mass and increase their graviational strength. Black holes will eventually merge into super black holes (many already exist at the center of large galaxies). Theoretically, the universe will pull itself into one massive black hole, a hypothesis called the Big Crunch. And then at a certain point, the Crunch will reverse itself and rapidly expand into a new universe, a phenomenon commonly accepted as the Big Bang. From there, the universe will crunch again after billions of years before another Big Bang happens. It's theorectically an endless cycle.

Answer 4

you're thinking of space as a 'thing' that can be sucked in by a black hole. fact is, space is just a space, a place full of empty space.......it can't be sucked up by any black hole because it is mostly vacuum. space is a pretty quiet place!
and anyways, there is not black hole large enough to suck up the whole of space. in that case, the black hole should not be situated somewhere in space, but space should be contained inside a black hole.

Answer 5

Black holes are about mass and gravity. The mass of a black hole is insufficient to have the effects that you describe beyond a very short distance with respect to the entire universe.

Answer 6

They only "take in" objects that enter their event horizon (get very close). If the sun turned into a black hole right now the Earth would still happily orbit it for billions of years (although it would be pretty cold and dark).

Answer 7

Space is nothing ,and space has no mass so the black hole does not attract it.

Answer 8

if space would have been taken...then there will be alot more space to take up. space is space. just like a tomato is a tomato.

Answer 9

because space it infinate

Answer 10

because they arent bigg enough and to get bigg enough it would take to long and wouldnt work