Black Hole Simulator
A black hole is not a cosmic vacuum cleaner — it is a place where gravity has folded space so steeply that not even light can climb out. Increase the mass and watch the starfield behind it warp.
129.8 km
Radius where light can no longer escape
How it works
Mass bends space. Light always travels straight, but when space itself is curved, straight looks bent to us — that is gravitational lensing.
The event horizon is the point of no return. Cross it and every possible path leads inwards.
Falling matter piles into a superheated accretion disk that glows brighter than entire galaxies before it crosses the horizon.
Fun facts
The first photograph of a black hole was released in 2019, of M87's central giant.
Sagittarius A*, at the centre of our galaxy, is about 4 million times the Sun's mass.
Time runs slower near a black hole — an hour close in can be years far away.
If the Sun became a black hole, Earth's orbit would not change at all.
