Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 12/29/2007

Question
Hi, Mr Jayendra
Can you tell me what is a black hole?
Is their any oxygen in mars?
thanks

Answer
Hi, Keanu..
Nice name! :)
Well...The lightness with which you ask questions mazes me!

Anyways..
1 - A black hole is just a supermassive star that successfully made its way in life from hydrogen to helium to carbon to oxygen to sulphur etc till it took on the impossible task of creating trans-iron elements. That is an endothermic reaction and it saps the energy of the star.
At that stage the star simply "cooled " too fast and imploded. The core would have stabilised into a diamond hard (much harder actually) , neutron star, but its own mass crushed it in further, and eventually it turned into a very very small "thing". (A dimensionless Singularity!).

Surrounding it, like a 3d shadow is the event horizon! Anything passing in is lost for ever.

That in brief is a black hole.

2 - Most elements found on earth are found elsewhere in the solar system! Period. All that changes is relative abundance! If Oxygen is "free" (in the air) on earth, then it is locked into the sand and rock on mars as rust (componded with iron, or silicon).
In that respect it would be almost as abundant on mars as on earth! (in SiO2 form).

regards,
Jayen