Spiders, ghosts, ghouls, guns, bombs….scary, sure, but …nothing is scarier than a black
hole if you really think about it… but luckily we don’t have to think or dwell too much
on them.
They’re out there, sure… but pretty darn far from here.
They’re like, a back of the mind planet destroying menace… but what if one got all
up in Earth’s grill?
Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, the channel that loves to answer
all kinds of queries, from the serious to the whimsical…I think this one falls nicely
within our remit.
I am your host Rebecca Felgate, and today I am asking What Would Happen if a Black Hole
Entered Our Solar System.
Before we get really stuck into this video, I want you guys to tell me what you think
is on the other side of a black hole…
I think it could be a fold in space time and the portal to another universe… but that
is as of yet unproven!
Let me know your thoughts in the comments section down below and also if you want to
connect with the team that went into making this video then there are links in the description
box.
Okay, black holes.
Before we talk about what would happen to us, lets discuss the differences in varying
types of black holes, because no, there isn’t just one, and yes, the differentiation is
important.
There are two types of black hole; supermassive black holes which are at the heart of every
galaxy, and stellar mass black holes.
Supermassive black holes have the mass of millions of stars and stellar mass black holes
are still dense, but on a much smaller scale, and they can move.
If , say, the super massive black hole at the centre of the milky way entered our solar
system, well, it would basically be immediate curtains for us.
The hole in question is called Sagittarius A and it is 4.5 million solar masses in size.
If something of that mass entered our solar system, we would quickly be drawn into it,
it having unimaginably more gravity than the sun we currently orbit.
It would be a hop, a skip and a planet smash toward the event horizon – and depending
on if our sun went first, it could be pretty cold and dark, too.
Thing is though, as unlikely as it is that any form of black hole will ever enter our
solar system, it is especially unlikely and neigh on impossible that a supermassive black
hole will ever swing by – we could move towards it… but that would take… well….to
our human understanding…and eternity.
So, really, what we are left with here is the option of a smaller, more travelable stellar
mass black holes.
These are formed by the implosion of stars much larger than our sun and can be up to
20 times the mass of our sun.
It is estimated that there are as many as ten million, or maybe more stellar mass black
holes in our Galaxy, alone.
The nearest is Monocerotis, known as v616 Mon.
It is 3,000 light years away and is thought to be between 9 to 13 times the mass of our
sun.
So….
What would happen is a stellar mass black hole entered our solar system?
There are some variables here – the answer totally depends on the mass of the black hole
and the distance between us and earth.
If a small black hole a few times the mass of our sun popped by Pluto, it may not have
any affect on us, but if a black hole the size of Monocerotis entered the very edges
of our system, we may find ourselves more susceptible to asteroid hits and a slight
slow down of our earth year as the gravity from the black hole effects our orbit speed.
There is a chance we would see warmer summers and colder winters, too.
If the black hole got close, like, say the distance of our gas giants away, well it would
have an effect on them, for sure.
The gases would be sucked in, so say bye to the rings of Saturn for a start.
We don’t know how the core of other planets work, but if they are like ours, maybe the
intense gravity of the black hole would crack them, breaking up the planet and drawing in
its matter…or maybe the outer planets of our solar system would begin to orbit the
black hole instead of the sun…but would this mess with our orbit path and would we
see a planetary smash ….possibly.
At this distance, the black hole would effect earth quite significantly.
This could severely disturb our orbit, drawing us closer or further away to the sun, massively
effecting our seasons and perhaps knocking us our of our habitable zone.
We are on what people call the goldilocks line – the perfect coordinates for life
– it evolved that way – even a shift of a few thousand kilometres either way could
destroy that, ending life as we know it.
If the stella mass black hole came even closer, then yes, we could be sucked into its mass
slowly but surely, but not before huge tidal waves rip over the ocean, drowning us all
– as we know, the earths tides bulge in response to the moons gravity…and the moon’s
mass is a spec in the ocean when it comes to the mass of a black hole…so….yeah…we
all die.
The effect of the gravity from the holes mass may even start to crack our planet’s crust,
causing super volcanos, in which, you guessed it, we would all die…although good luck
tryna kill me twice black hole, you sun of a gun.
And yes, eventually the whole ball of joy, our beautiful planet earth will be torn up
and gobbled up atom by atom in a stretch of delicious particle spaghetti…. but is this
the end?
Circling back to the whole kill me twice thing – there are still a lot of questions as
to what is on the other side of a black hole.
Some scientists, the late great Stephen Hawking, for example thought that black holes could
be folds in the universe, or the portal to another all together and all the matter spewing
from it creates something new.
It’s a bit of a mind bender, but honestly, we really don’t need to worry about it.
Our solar system has been surviving and thriving for around 4 and half billion years, and there
is no evidence that we have ever encountered a black hole, and there really isn’t one
near enough by that is travelling towards us to worry that we ever will.
It’s fun to imagine, right.
Althoughhhh…I will leave you with one final fact to mull over.
There is something scientists have created on earth called the Large Hadron Collider.
This particle smashing machine could possible have the ability to create a mini black hole…what
would happen then?
Well that is a different question for another day.
So that is what we think would happen if a black hole entered our solar system – what
would you do if you heard there was one swimming up to our hood?
Let me know.
We love your comments.
Also why don’t you like and share this video and click on that big beautiful notification
bell to stay up to date with all of our big answers.
I am your host Rebecca Felgate, I’ll catch you in the next video, but until then…why
don’t you stay curious, stay alert and never ever stop questioning.