We know that black holes are formed from stars. But what if your cat turned into one? Now you would ask me, how can a cat turn into black hole when it is nowhere near the size of a star. Hell you would even say that if I were to throw a cat in star it would just probably burn up and die. Not a very good end for our catty friend (let's call him Jürgen). But let me enlighten you. There exists something called a Schwarzschild Radius for each and every body with mass, be it the apple that fell on Newton's head or VY Canis Majoris (the largest star in the observable universe). This radius is given by a relatively simple equation:-
This equation is called the Schwarzschild Equation and is named after Karl Schwarzschild, who solved Einstein's field equations and arrived at this result.
In the equation, 'G' stands for the universal gravitational constant (which has a value of 6.67*10^11 Nm^2/kg^2), 'M' is the mass of the body in question and 'c' is the value of the speed of light.
Let's do a fun experiment. Let's calculate the Schwarzschild radius of a common house cat. Let's take 'M' to be 5 kg (average weight of a common house cat is about 5 kg). The radius turns out to be somewhere around 1.5*10^-27 m. Now this number is extremely small. It is smaller than the radius of an atom as well. Similarly, for our very own sun this radius is somewhere around 3km.
Now you will tell me that calculating this Schwazzzthingamabob is all cool and stuff but what do we do once we find it. Here is your answer, once a body is compressed down to its Schwarzschild radius they turn into black holes! So if Jürgen were to be compressed so much, then he would turn into a black hole albeit a small one. Now this black hole will be very short lived and will quickly evaporate and cause an explosion greater than that of atomic bombs. Why does this happen? Stay tuned for the next post where I will talk about Hawking Radiations and more about black holes.
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