Summarize the methods that astronomers use to detect the presence of Black Holes, even though they themselves emit no light.
Do a google search or whatever on "Binary Neutron Stars" and report on why these systems are of interest to astronomers
and what makes them special probes.
The Schwarschild radius (e.g. the radius of the event horizon) of a 1 solar mass black hole is 3 kilometers. Calculate (show your work) the schwarschild radius of a 1 earth mass black hole. Note that you don't need to know the gravitational constant and the speed of light to calculate this if you use all the information in this problem. If you don't go this route, you will need to look up these constants. Make sure that you use the same system of units for all quantities, ie. MKS (meters-kilograms-seconds)
At the other end of the scale are blackholes in the centers of galaxies
that weigh 100 million solar masses. Derive the schwarschild radius for this
kind of black hole and then compute its density and compare this with
the density of the 1 earth mass black hole in the previous question. Does
this comparison surprise you? Note, you will need to look up the equation of the volume of a sphere.
Our Galaxy appears to be long overdue for the occurrence of another Supernova. Find some information on Supernova rates for galaxies like ours and report those results. When was the last Supernova to occur in our galaxy? Based on the supernova rate, do you think that our Galaxy has been deficient in the production of supernova over the last few hundred years?