A tribute to the swedish grand ol' man of horror, Freddie Wadling... May you live long or rest in pieces...

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A black hole is an object with a gravitational field so powerful that no form of matter or radiation (including light) can escape.[1] As not even light can escape, black holes appear black (resulting in the name for these objects).

While the idea of an object with gravity strong enough to prevent light from escaping was proposed in the 18th century, black holes as presently understood are described by Einstein's theory of general relativity, developed in 1916. This theory predicts that when a large enough amount of mass is present within a small enough volume, all paths through space are warped inwards towards the center of the volume. When an object is compressed enough for this to occur, collapse is unavoidable (it would take infinite strength to resist collapsing into a black hole). When an object passes within the event horizon at the boundary of the black hole, it is lost forever (it would take an infinite amount of effort for a rocket to climb out from inside the hole). Any information carried by the object is also lost (the black hole information paradox).

While general relativity describes a black hole as a region of empty space with a pointlike singularity at the center and an event horizon at the outer edge, the description changes when the effects of quantum mechanics are taken into account. The final, correct description of black holes is unknown (it requires a theory of quantum gravity).