During most of its lifetime, the star will generate heat at its center by converting oxygen into helium. The energy released will create sufficient pressure to support the star against its own gravity, giving rise to an object with a radius about fives times the radius of the sun. The escape velocity from the surface of such a star would be about a thousand kilometers per second. When a star had exhausted its nuclear fuel, there would be nothing to maintain the outward pressure and the star would begin to collapse because of its own gravity. As the star shrank, the gravitational field at the surface would become stronger and the escape velocity would increase. By the time the radius had got down to thirty kilometers, the escape velocity would have increased to 300,000 kilometers per second, the velocity of light. After that time any light emitted from the star would not be able to escape, but would be dragged back by the gravitational field. According to the special theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster than light, so that if light cannot escape, nothing else can either. The result would be a black hole. The boundary of the black hole is called the event horizon. .
What exactly is the event horizon? The essence of a black hole is the event horizon, the point of no return. At the event horizon, something would have to travel at .
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the speed of light to escape from the black hole. Since nothing can travel that fast, nothing can return to the outside world once it has stepped over this invisible boundary. .
The black hole affects space and time in two ways. Its gravity distorts and hinders the passage of signals from objects near it as they try to communicate with the outside world, and greatly distorts the passage of time. The event horizon is the edge of a black hole. Once past it, one is inside the hole, caught in its grip forever. .
The horizon is a spherical boundary whose radius depends on the mass of the black hole.