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The heat expansion and cold shrinkage of matter is the vacuum effect at work.

The vacuum effect operates at all physical levels, from the smallest quark to the entirety of the universe itself. But to keep it simple, I will explain the effect on a hypothetical star.

The star is surrounded by empty space (cold), which is compressing the star. The greatest compression is taking place in the star's core. This instigates heat-creating vibration, first in the quarks, then in the atomic particles, then in the atoms, then in the molecules. All of which expand in relative order, and continue expanding as the heat increases.

The heat at the core must escape or the increasing vibration will cause the star to explode. The core heat moves outward towards the surface. This, of course, heats up the entire body of the star, and the star expands.

Once the heat reaches the surface it escapes as radiation. Radiation is really a stream of the star's matter drifting away.

When the vacuum effect has sufficiently cooled the star, it begins to collapse upon itself. This happens because the outer layers cool more quickly than the core. The matter of the outer layers compresses and is pushed inward towards the core.
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As the outer layers compress the core, it not only increases the heat within the core, it also becomes more difficult for the heat to escape. In order for the heat to escape, the outer layers must grow hotter, but at this point the vacuum effect has compressed the outer layers too much to allow this to happen.

At this point three things can happen, depending upon the size of the star.

A small star will compress to such an extent that a cubic inch of its matter weighs several tons.

Large stars will eventually explode. Although much of their matter has been expelled, the center mass still remains and the vacuum effect continues. As the outer matter cools, it is pulled (or sucked) back towards the core. Large stars will continue compressing until they reach "singularity," a volume of zero, otherwise known as a black hole.

A black hole isn't really a hole at all, but a tremendously compressed lump of matter. This lump is surrounded by a gravitational field of a slightly larger periphery than the lump, called the "event horizon." This gravitational field is so powerful that nothing coming into contact with it can escape, not even light. Since nothing can radiate from the event horizon, it is invisible, appearing only as a black hole in space.

CONTINUED


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