black holes aren't exactly a popular
vacation destination
they feed on anything and everything
that comes into the vicinity they're
dense and unpredictably volatile and
they don't let anything I mean anything
escape their gravitational grasp going
to the event horizon of a black hole
would be a very daring dangerous
experience let's get to it already this
is what if and here's what would happen
if you travel to a black hole not all
black holes are the same some of them
are relatively small reaching only 10 to
20 times the mass of our Sun there are
millions of them in the Milky Way alone
then there are truly gravitational
giants supermassive black holes and they
are called supermassive for nothing they
can grow millions of times the mass of
our Sun and they're lurking at the
center of almost every galaxy including
our own choosing a black hole to travel
to is the first thing you'd need to do
before jumping into a spaceship where
would you find yourself a black hole
that wouldn't gobble you up the second
you arrive in its territory and how
close could you get to one before it's
squeezed and stretched and turn you into
spaghetti
I hope you've seen enough what if
stories by now to know that a black hole
isn't something you can see with your
own eyes what you would see is stars
collapsing into it because black holes
swallow everything they can reach with
their gravity they're especially hard to
catch on camera
this is the first and only picture of a
black hole we have so far
it shows the orbit of photons around a
supermassive black hole in the galaxy
Messier 87 and it took eight huge
telescopes across the earth five days of
observing and two years of combining the
signals together to produce this one
image so maybe you won't need to bring
your camera with you this time okay now
let me pick a black hole for you I
suggest the nearest one v6 one six
monocerotis or simply v6 one six month
it's only 3,000 light years away and it
has the mass of nine to thirteen times
that of our Sun now even if you could
thrust through space at the speed of
light it would still take you three
thousand years so reach v6 one six mod
our universe is just too enormous to
travel around that means only one thing
you'd have to jump to thousands of years
into the future where there might be the
technology to get close enough to your
destination but no it's not time for
that what if story just yet let's keep
heading towards v6 one six Mon this is
where the fun part begins as you're
heading towards v6 one six mod even as
you're light-years away from it you
start feeling the black hole's effects
better put your shades on because while
black holes don't emit any light they
attract a lot of stars it would be a
non-stop cascade of light and according
to Stephen Hawking there would be
radiation - it would also be getting
quite hot
black holes are freezing cold on the
inside
some black holes internal temperature
could drop to only one one millionth of
a degree above absolute zero but on the
outside black holes have neutrino
particles constantly colliding with each
other and radioactively heating their
surroundings to millions of degrees this
is the part where you should be totally
toasted but I don't want to stop the
story from getting to its destination
you've already traveled thousands of
light-years what's a little heat anyway
it didn't stop Stephen Hawking from
travelling to one of his most favorite
places in the universe hypothetically of
course the greatest physicist of our
time toward the supermassive black hole
at the center of the Milky Way and that
wasn't the only place he visited you can
join him on his adventures in a
documentary from our friends at
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and don't worry I didn't forget about
you approaching the black hole can you
hear me sorry I forgot to mention the
clouds of radiation and particles
these clouds of Hawking radiation would
also be forming magnetic fields throwing
debris around at the speed of light
how much closer could you get to the
black hole after all you don't want to
fall into it just visit let's see the
distance between a black hole's event
horizon and its singularity is referred
to as its Schwarzschild radius after the
german physicist and astronomer carl
Schwartz chilled the Schwarzschild
radius defines the size of the black
hole's event horizon a boundary beyond
which you wouldn't be affected by a
black hole as long as you stay on the
opposite side of it the closest you
could get to a black hole without being
sucked in would be 2 times the
Schwarzschild radius but if you're
looking to observe from a stable orbit
you'd better stay a distance of 3 times
the Schwarzschild radius and if you
wanted to get back home safely this is
about as far as you could go coming any
closer to a black hole would start
spaghettify you at an increasing rate
but that's a story for another what if
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you
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