There’s been a lot of talk about black holes lately since Kathrine Bouman figured out how
to take a picture of one. After seeing the image, I realized I didn’t actually know
that much about them. So instead of working today, I went down my own black hole of watching
a bunch of science videos (don’t tell my boss), and I got this thought: what would
happen if a black hole came into our solar system?
So, I did what most people do when some random question pops up in their brain: I took to
the internet to find the answer. And oh boy, did I learn some things!
Our solar system is made up of eight planets, hundreds of natural satellites like moons,
thousands of asteroids, and billions of comets. This beautiful space cocktail is constantly
moving around our sun. But it could all be torn apart if just one stray black hole decided
to drop by… A black hole isn’t likely going to disturb
the peace of our planet anytime soon. And even though the closest black hole to our
solar system is 10 to 13 times the mass of our sun, it’s located 3,000 light years
away. So we’d know way in advance if it ever decided to start moving closer. But let’s
pretend that some other black hole decides to take a shortcut through our solar system.
First, I have a confession to make. Before I did all this research, I thought black holes
were like, just giant space holes. Turns out that they’re actually huge amounts of matter
crammed into a teeny-tiny space. It’d be like squeezing the entire mass of our sun
into Manhattan! As a result, they have an extremely strong gravitational pull. In fact,
it’s so powerful that even light can’t escape once a hole gets its hands on it.
I also thought that all black holes were basically the same. A big fat star collapses, then boom,
black hole. Those ones are called stellar mass black holes. But there are also mega
monsters called supermassive black holes. Those ones can be found churning slowly at
the centers of galaxies. They gather tremendous amounts of gas and star dust around them making
them expand to sizes our simple human minds would find unfathomable.
Now, the chances of us getting close to a supermassive black hole are infinitesimal.
But if our galaxy, the Milky Way, decided to rearrange itself, putting us a few dozen
light years away from the center where a supermassive black hole lives (instead of 26,000 light
years away), we’d be doomed. You see, all those planets, stars, comets, and space debris
circling around the monster would come flying into our solar system, crashing into everything
and making a big mess. And whatever’s left of our little family of planets would get
swept up into the current of the gravitational pull and circle around the black hole until
the end of time. But what about a stellar mass black hole?
They may be way smaller than those monstrous supermassive black holes, but there’s a
lot more of them in the universe! They appear when stars run out of their star fuel and
basically fall into themselves. This only happens if a star is big enough, like 3-10
times bigger than our sun. It’ll keep compressing and compressing until… viola! A baby stellar
mass black hole is born. Awww…
It may be baby in size, but these puppies are still 20 times heavier than the sun. So
let’s say, unknown to us, a stellar mass black hole is nearing the outskirts of our
solar system right now! First to feel its effects will be the Oort Cloud, named after
Dutch astronomer Jan Oort. This bubble of icy space debris that surrounds the outermost
rim of our solar system, 100,000 times further out than we are from the sun, will be popped
by the gravitational pull of the black hole. As a result, ice-cold comets from this area
get sent toward Earth and other planets of our solar system. And we keep living our lives
like nothing is wrong. (Whistles) Here’s the thing I find most terrifying
– we wouldn’t notice the black hole until it’s too late! The only detail that could
give away the approaching black hole is a slight blurring of distant stars due to the
hole’s gravitational lensing effect. The gravitational field of a black hole is so
powerful it actually bends light rays trying to pass by it. We may miss that clue, but
we’ll definitely notice when the black hole starts pulling layers from the gas planets,
such as Neptune, Jupiter, or Saturn. It’ll create such a huge, super-hot cloud of dust
and gas around itself, that people of earth couldn’t help but notice.
It seems unfair that something that small (the tiniest black holes can be only 15 miles
in diameter!) can consume things thousands of times bigger. But before it eats any of
our solar system, it’ll tear it all apart first. You see, our planets are held in orbit
by our sun’s gravity. As the gravitational pull of the black hole approaches each planet,
it’ll play tug-of-war with our sun, ripping them all to pieces. As soon as the black hole
reaches the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, we’ll start to feel its pull.
Super volcanoes will go off, devastating earthquakes will shake the ground, and everything will
crumble into dust and debris, Thanos-style. Also contrary to what I used to believe, black
holes don’t “suck” stuff in either! Suction can only be caused when something
is getting pulled into the vacuum of space, and a black hole is the opposite of space.
So don’t worry, if we ever got close enough to one, we’d never get sucked in, we’d
simply just fall in. (Well, that’s comforting to know!)
But it’s not a drop kind of fall. Black holes like to make a show out of it. Before
disappearing into the abyss, anything that falls into the gravitational pull of a black
hole will go through a process called spaghettification. (I know, I giggled when I heard the word for
the first time too!) But it’s no laughing matter! Basically, if anything gets too close
to a black hole, before it falls in, it gets stretched waaaay out (like a spaghetti noodle!)
due to the hole’s incredible gravity. So, yeah, there’s some food for thought. Yum-yum!
But don’t worry about all this spaghetti talk! According to scientific estimations,
the odds of a black hole coming across our solar system, much less munching on our planet,
are lower than the chance of winning the lottery ten times in a row. In numbers, that’s one-in-a-trillion!
Whew! That’s a relief! I have to say, black holes are really cool.
The more I learn about them, the more curious I get. Like what would happen if two supermassive
black holes collided? Would they create a mega-super-duper-massive black hole? Like
two monster hurricanes colliding and merging together to create the most epic hurricane,
but in space? It turns out that almost all galaxies in the
universe have their own supermassive black holes in the center of them. In some of these
galaxies, the black holes can be billions of times more massive than our sun! Now imagine
what would happen when two galaxies become one. Their black holes would have to somehow
agree to cohabitate and interact like civilized… well… holes, I guess.
But scientists believe that in the event two supermassive black holes come in contact,
either by spiraling inward and eventually touching or by direct collision, it wouldn’t
be a peaceful merge. Instead, because the forces are so great, one of the black holes
will get kicked away at an incredible speed! The most powerful kick can happen if the two
black holes have been rotating in opposite directions. It would be like two discs spinning
incredibly fast coming together. The weaker of the two black holes would get hurled out
of the newly formed galaxy to never be heard from again. And the winning black hole will
get rewarded with a huge amount of energy making the clouds of dust and gas surrounding
it blaze for thousands of years. Now that’s what I call “Star Wars”!
Sorry. What’s your biggest “what if” question
that distracts you from work or keeps you up at night? Let me know in the comments!
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