Editing 2844: Black Holes vs Regular Holes

| When a sufficiently large star has consumed nearly all of its low-atomic-weight "fuel", it collapses. This triggers an explosion of what "fuel" remains, creating a supernova. If enough mass remains after the explosion, it becomes a black hole. A black hole can also be formed if enough mass in a small volume accumulates by two stars, especially neutron stars, colliding. On the contrary, regular holes are often created by a variety of natural and anthropogenic causes including, but not limited to: humans using shovels, small mammals such as moles or dogs, the shift or evaporation of underground water, volcanic processes, etc. Of course, this is by no means limited only to small mammals and many animals, from elephants to ants, are also known to sometimes create this kind of hole.

| Falling into a black hole is almost always fatal, because of the shearing effect created by tidal forces, the intense gravity and/or radiation from its {{w|accretion disk}}. If the black hole was extremely massive (on the order of many galaxies' worth of mass) and had a very large event horizon, the tidal forces at its event horizon would not be very strong, nor would there be a noticeable accretion disk, though the gravity would still be enough to turn anything falling into it into a "spaghetti". On the other hand, only if a regular hole is deep enough (or someone falls incorrectly), is it possible for someone to die by falling into it.

| If a star is large enough, when the star dies, it may still have enough gravity to collapse back into itself, thus creating a black hole. Additionally, any star in range of a black hole, such as those near the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy, may also fall into it. Other things may collapse into regular holes in a different sense - for example, a house may collapse into a sink hole. However, most regular holes are not large enough for a star to collapse into in this way (unless one considers the near vacuum of space itself to be a 'hole').

|{{w|Meerkat}}s commonly live in holes underground, being an example of a small mammal. It is highly unlikely that Earth mammals live in black holes, but because it is impossible to know what lies beyond the event horizon it is [[technically]] impossible to falsify the postulate that there are meerkats there.