Just a thought ... Could it be that a black hole is the result of a mass sufficiently large to suck in all light that comes within some specific distance of that mass?
We know that light bends slightly as it passes our sister planets while moving on to earth.
Funny you say this..
From a BBC Article in 2005
Why the Sun seems to be ‘dimming’
We are all seeing rather less of the Sun, according to scientists who have been looking at five decades of sunlight measurements.
They have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface has been gradually falling.
Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought.
The effect was first spotted by Gerry Stanhill, an English scientist working in Israel.
Cloud changes
Comparing Israeli sunlight records from the 1950s with current ones, Dr Stanhill was astonished to find a large fall in solar radiation.
“There was a staggering 22% drop in the sunlight, and that really amazed me.” Intrigued, he searched records from all around the world, and found the same story almost everywhere he looked.
Sunlight was falling by 10% over the USA, nearly 30% in parts of the former Soviet Union, and even by 16% in parts of the British Isles.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm
Good point. And what's coming out the other end after swallowing all that mass?
That’s pretty much exactly what a black hole is. Except that the mass is just mass, it ceases to be matter but retains it’s mass.