Question: why does black attract more light ????

Douglas Blane answered on 18 Jun 2010:

Ok, I’m not sure what your question is. I’ll have a go, but if I’ve misunderstood please come back and tell me.

I think you might be talking about black holes. They do attract light and everything else.

Why? Well Einstein discovered that energy and mass are two forms of the same thing. A bit like ice and water.

Mass is frozen energy, if you like.

Now light is a form of energy. So light must have mass. This was new with relativity. Until then scientists thought light had no mass.

But if light has mass it should be attracted by the sun and stars. So in 1919, an expedition went to an island off the coast of Africa – led by an Englishman called Arthur Eddington – to study light from stars close to the sun during a total eclipse.

They found that Einstein was right – starlight passing near the sun was bent towards it by the sun’s gravity.

Now a black hole is a place in space where gravity is so strong that anything close is pulled in and can’t get out again.

That includes light. A black hole attracts light because light has mass. It hangs onto it because the gravity of a black hole is so strong.

I hope that helps. Please let me know if I’ve answered the wrong question and I’ll try again.