ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by black holes.

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Now you see 'em, now you don't. Yeah.

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All right, well, take a look at the following passage.

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[ mumbles ]

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And our question:

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Scientists cannot see black holes because...

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, well, most of our science projects

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involved Mentos and Diet Coke...

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but we can still answer this question.

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We can rule out A right away because the paragraph

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tells us that black holes are fairly common.

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And answer B can be ruled out because the paragraph states

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that their effects can be observed.

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So even though scientists can't see them, we know they exist,

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like playing a game of hide and seek with a very acrobatic elephant.

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This leaves us with answers C and D.

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The paragraph does not mention us not having the technology

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to see black holes, so we can eliminate C.

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Which means that D has to be the right one.

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Scientists cannot see black holes because they absorb all light.

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Human vision is only possible when light can be reflected,

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so we'll never see a black hole directly,

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just its effects.

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Like, you know, it sucks in the light and matter

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from everything around it. So it's like it all disappears

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into this black hole. That's probably what Einstein meant.

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[ whoosh ]

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