Submitted by Bruce as a science writing evaluation.
The Life and Times of a Black Hole
Ah, how good it feels to finally tell someone my life story. A black hole doesn’t see many interesting stars, you see. Most of them just get sucked up, spaghettified, and crushed into the singularity at my center. What a good way to explain my life!
I started out as all stars did back then, and still do; as part of a nebula, a gigantic cluster of gas and dust. I was a smaller clump of gas and dust, just ready to become a protostar. Â Not much to look at, mind you, but it was necessary to begin my existence. One day, part of the gas and dust gained enough mass to pull all of the other gas around it into me. I was becoming a protostar!
Oh, how excited I was, after floating around as a bunch of space dust for so long. As more and more stuff was flung together, my core gained more and more mass, heated up more and more, and pulled more and more gas and dust into it! I’m not the ambitious type, but that’s just how it works. Soon, there was so much stuff and it was so hot in my core that all of those hydrogen atoms got very excited and started smashing into each other. Ah, how kids are these days! They started fusing into helium atoms, and unleashed a burst of energy that ignited my core and turned me into a real star!
I completely dwarfed my stellar companions, as I was a very high-mass star. How else would I become a black hole? I went on this way for millions of years, burning a blazing white color, and smashing increasingly heavy molecules together until one day, when I ran out of fuel. Why such a short time, you ask? Well, as a high-mass youth, I was very greedy and consumed my atoms very quickly. Should I have been smaller, I would have been wiser in consuming my fuel. I don’t believe in zodiacs, but this is actually true. This is a good life lesson for any stellar beings out there. Too much fusion will kill you sooner.
When all I had left was iron (which cannot be fused, of course), the outside of me started inflating, as my core was getting smaller. With my core that small, my gravity was diminishing, so all the gases that joined me as a protostar were departing around me – such a sad sight. Oh, curses, I’m getting all teary again. You’ll have to forgive me, it’s just… would you feel happy if all of your lifelong friends were leaving all around you? Where was I now? Oh yes – the supergiant part. Well, when I got big enough, I was officially classified as a supergiant. As I became less hot, I turned a dark red color, even though I used to be a white color. Now, I was taught in star school that when this happened, all of the gases would float around me and spread out, I would become a planetary nebula, give birth to a few thousand stars, and then become a white dwarf and live happily ever after, but not for me. My mass had other plans…
BANG! All of those gases imploded inwards with crushing force, and then exploded outwards!  I had become a supernova! All of the gases formed beautiful colors; I’m sure stars for hundreds of light-years around marveled at the beauty (except for the ones close by me; let’s just say… they didn’t live as long as I did). Now, I had two choices (well, my mass did, anyway). Would I stay a neutron star, a small city-sized celestial object with huge mass? Or would I collapse into a singularity and become a black hole, an abnormality which even light could not escape? Well, I think you can guess which one occurred.
Yep, you guessed it. As my gases dissipated, the enormous amount of mass I collected collapsed, and everything in the immediate area was sucked into my singularity. A stream of X-rays eventually shot out of my polar regions, and I was a black hole, a rift in the time-space continuum, spaghettifying everything that came close to me. That, my friends, is the life of a black hole (well, I high-mass star, anyway).