It's time for one of the biggest battles
our Solar System has ever seen.
In this corner,
a gas giant and heavyweight,
Jupiter.
And in this corner,
an infinitely small
but truly terrifying black hole.
OK, before the fight,
let's take a quick look
at exactly
what each contender is up against.
Starting with our Solar System's favorite.
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun,
located about 740 million km (460 million mi) from it.
This gas giant is the largest planet, too.
It's about 318 times more massive than Earth
and twice as massive as
all the other planets
in our neighborhood combined.
But looks can be deceiving.
Compared to its opponent,
the heavyweight Jupiter isn't all that heavy.
Stellar black holes
are a lot smaller than our gas giant.
But they sure can pack a punch.
The thing about black holes
is that they are dense.
Incredibly dense.
All of their matter is contained within
an infinitely small point
known as a singularity.
And inside this tiny region,
all concepts of time
and space fall apart.
And like any object with mass,
black holes have gravity.
A lot of gravity.
Most black holes are remnants of massive stars.
They're called stellar black holes,
and they range from three to 10 solar masses.
But because they're so dense,
if a black hole with 10 times
the mass of our Sun
appeared in our Solar System,
it would only be 60 km (37 mi) across.
So would our gas giant Jupiter
stand a chance to defeat its tiny
but immensely powerful contender?
Or would it just be another object lost
inside the black hole's
point of no return?
Everything in the Universe
is moving through space
at breakneck speed.
And, naturally,
that includes the Sun
and the rest of our Solar System.
We're whizzing across the cosmos
at about 720,000 km/h (448,000 mph).
And in this galactic dance,
another star may come close enough to us
to influence the outer regions of our Solar System.
Or worse,
we might run into one of the nearly
one billion black holes
rampaging around the Milky Way galaxy.
Of course,
the chances of this happening are slim.
The closest star in our neighborhood
is over four light-years away.
And that's far.
Scientists think there's only a 1% chance
that another star will ever come close enough
to disrupt the edges of our Solar System.
The chances of a rogue star coming
close enough to mess with Jupiter
are even lower.
But it could happen.
At first,
as this stealthy force of destruction
swung toward us,
the black hole would disrupt the Oort cloud.
This area surrounds our Solar System
like a giant spherical shell,
and it's filled with icy objects.
But these mountain-sized ice cubes
would be no match
for a black hole.
As they were pulled
along for the ride with this small
but massive monstrosity,
this would be the first sign
that an epic collision
with Jupiter's was unavoidable.
The gravitational intruder
would continue through the next region,
the Kuiper belt.
And it would wreak havoc along the way.
Many of the icy objects here,
including the dwarf planet Pluto,
would be ejected
from their orbits.
Things would suddenly get more serious for Earth,
as many of these objects
would now be on a deadly collision course with us.
As it passed Neptune,
Uranus and Saturn,
the black hole would tear away their gases.
These gases
would form an accretion disk
of superheated gas and dust
around the gravitational intruder.
And if the black hole came too
close to any of these planets,
they could also be at risk
of being ejected from their orbits.
Then the black hole
would finally bear down on Jupiter.
And right away,
the gas giant would experience
a similar attack on its atmosphere.
The black hole would pull away
hydrogen and helium gases
like yarn from a yarn ball.
Eventually, the entire planet
would be pulled toward the black hole.
It would be an unfair fight
from the get-go.
Jupiter wouldn't even be able to get a punch in.
And if all this isn't violent enough,
just wait.
As this dense and hungry monster
chowed down on Jupiter's abundance of gas,
it would also release an explosive
wave of UV and X-rays.
In all directions.
Yeah, it would be like one big
supermassive burp,
packed with deadly radiation.
This radiation would hurtle
toward us on Earth.
In less than an hour,
lethal amounts of radioactive material
would rain down on us.
But on the bright side,
you'd finally be able to see
the black hole up in the sky.
Whatever stability we enjoy
in our Solar System
would be gone.
The black hole would be swallowing up
everything in sight.
Including our planet.
Now, if we somehow
managed to be spared
the full brunt of the black hole's destructive forces,
well, without Jupiter,
our Solar System would need to find
a new gravitational balance.
Yeah, Jupiter had a special place
in our neighborhood.
Its enormous gravity
kept asteroids and comets
from pummeling us
and other inner planets
of our neighborhood.
It also helped Earth maintain
its nearly circular orbit
around the Sun.
So even if we survived
all the gravitational havoc
from a rogue black hole,
without Jupiter,
the little space rock
we call home
wouldn’t last long.
But hey, let's not kid ourselves.
What are the chances
this black hole would devour Jupiter
and then just stop dead in its tracks?
No, it’s coming for you too!
You'd get a firsthand
look at what would happen
if a black hole sucked you
into its event horizon.
Hopefully, you can travel faster
than the speed of light.
Otherwise,
your annihilation would be horrifying.
But that's a story for another WHAT IF.