system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does light orbit black holes?

Black holes are always explained in terms of a thing so heavy that not even light can escape its gravitational pull. I always thought of this in terms of the light that would be produced by the thing itself (i.e. as a kid I thought as black holes as really big stars that were compressed to the point that the light they produced couldn't escape). But what about light produced elsewhere, passing by the black hole? Does it end up orbiting the black hole, going just fast enough not to fall into it? Is there a place just far enough away from the black hole that the light doesn't fall into it but close enough that it doesn't just curve around it or shoot past it? Would this place be blindingly bright, with light from all the surrounding stars and universes spinning around the black hole endlessly? Or am I thinking about this all wrong?
gpt
Theoretically, it could. Even other perfectly spherical bodies with a radius smaller than 1.5 Schwarschild radii, a neutron star for instance. But it had to orbit it at precisely the right distance (namely 1.5 times the Schwarzschild radius), or else it will fall in or shoot out. So in reality you will never find light orbiting a black hole, because the slightest perturbation is going to be the end of it.