Kip in Discover

There's an interesting interview with Kip Thorne [pdf, 4mb] in the November issue of Discover Magazine. Here's an excerpt:

A big misconception is that a black hole is made of matter that has just been compacted to a very small size. That's not true. A black hole is made from warped space and time. It may have been created by an imploding star. But the star's matter is destroyed at the hole's center, where space-time is infinitely warped. There's nothing left anywhere but warped space-time.

A black hole really is an object with very rich structure, just like Earth has a rich structure of mountains, valleys, oceans, and so forth. Its warped space whirls around the central singularity like air in a tornado. It has time slowing as you approach the hole's edge, the so-called horizon, and then inside the horizon, time flows toward and into the singularity, dragging everything that's inside the horizon forward in time· to its destruction.

Looking at a black hole from the outside, it will bend light rays that pass near it, and in this way it will distort images of the sky. You will see a dark spot where nothing can come through because the light rays are going down the hole. And around it you will see a bright ring of highly distorted images of the star field or whatever is behind it.

For further reading http://www.black-holes.org/ might have some good stuff.