: I'm not going to pretend I know anything about black holes, because, I pretty much don't. What I do know is that astronomers notice where a black hole canidate is by the ammount of energy that dissapears from the area around the canidate point, now this energy just dissapears? Where does it go? What happens to it? 10% of all the matter that hits a black hole is transfered into thermal energy, where does that go if nothing escapes a black hole? Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from one form to another. The other 90% I think could remain as potential energy, or kinetic, then when it gets to the accreation disc, just revolve around there, but what about light/radio waves, and that 10% thermal energy?