[Rama Set]

What are you talking about?  There is the entire mass of a very large star making up a black hole.

I was under the impression that black holes consumed matter and released it as energy. I'm not a physicist.

A black hole is created when a star over a certain mass threshold collapses, due to its fusion reaction ceasing.  The gravitational force compacts the matter in to a singularity, making the newly formed black hole's gravitational field extremely strong.  Anything that crosses the event horizon, cannot escape, including energy.  The energy consumed eventually is radiated back out via Hawking Radiation. 

[Ghost of V]

What are you talking about?  There is the entire mass of a very large star making up a black hole.

I was under the impression that black holes consumed matter and released it as energy. I'm not a physicist.

A black hole is created when a star over a certain mass threshold collapses, due to its fusion reaction ceasing.  The gravitational force compacts the matter in to a singularity, making the newly formed black hole's gravitational field extremely strong.  Anything that crosses the event horizon, cannot escape, including energy.  The energy consumed eventually is radiated back out via Hawking Radiation.

So a black hole basically retains the same amount of matter that the collapsed star had?

[markjo]

What are you talking about?  There is the entire mass of a very large star making up a black hole.

This may not be strictly true.  Some quantum physicists believe that black holes are possible at the quantum scale.  In fact, I seem to recall a lot of people freaking out when they heard that the LHC could possibly create some of these sub-atomic black holes.

[Rama Set]

What are you talking about?  There is the entire mass of a very large star making up a black hole.

This may not be strictly true.  Some quantum physicists believe that black holes are possible at the quantum scale.  In fact, I seem to recall a lot of people freaking out when they heard that the LHC could possibly create some of these sub-atomic black holes.

Yeah, but those are strictly hypothetical and not possible outside of extreme circumstances, like those in the LHC which have not occured in our universe for 13B years.

What are you talking about?  There is the entire mass of a very large star making up a black hole.

I was under the impression that black holes consumed matter and released it as energy. I'm not a physicist.

A black hole is created when a star over a certain mass threshold collapses, due to its fusion reaction ceasing.  The gravitational force compacts the matter in to a singularity, making the newly formed black hole's gravitational field extremely strong.  Anything that crosses the event horizon, cannot escape, including energy.  The energy consumed eventually is radiated back out via Hawking Radiation.

So a black hole basically retains the same amount of matter that the collapsed star had?

Yup.