What Would Happen If Earth Fell Into A BLACK HOLE?
Blackholes are still somewhat of a mystery to us, however that may not always be the
case.
What we do know, is that they’re pretty scary and our galaxy alone is thought to contain
at least 100 million of them.
Yes.
100 million.
Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, I am Rebecca Felgate and today
I am asking What Would Happen If Earth Fell Into a Black Hole?
Black holes are wandering around our cosmic hood.
Their gravity is so dense that they are not stuck in orbit of another object.
They are also don’t omit any light or radiation so you can’t see them, making it hard to
know exactly where they are.
We can, however, see the holes effect on nearby matter.
Unless there is a lot of nearby matter, black holes can sneak around undetected.
There are two types of black holes; supermassive black holes which are at the heart of every
galaxy, and stellar mass black holes, which are the ones that can really creep up on you.
The nearest stellar mass black hole we know of is thought to be just under 3 thousand
light years away and is about 9 times the mass of our sun.
So what is a black hole exactly and why would it matter if we got close to one.
While there is no doubt we have a lot to learn about them, black holes are very very dense.
They’re so heavy, that they start to bend space and time, inwards.
Obviously, if they’re able to bend space, black holes are denser than our sun, which
means if one came close to earth, the gravitational pull of our solar system would shift… meaning
planets would be torn from orbit and likely smash into one another.
If we were able to avoid any planet smashing, we would quickly discover that earth has become
a dart board for asteroids.
Asteroids orbit too, and as much smaller rocks, they would easily be torn from their current
paths and hurled towards Earth.
This would not be ideal, as this could cause widespread death and destruction, and possibly
a number of fires.
If we, by some chance, managed to survive that, this next part would assure an end to
humanity.
As we were drawn closer to the black hole, our atmosphere would be torn away and sucked
in, then parts of the planet would break up itself.
Also, the radiation created from all the other broken apart material from other planets and
cosmic junk would be very, very intense.
Oh.
We might be dead, but what happens then.
What happens when we cross the event horizon and start travelling into that hole.
Well, honestly, we don’t know, but there are some key theories out there.
The first is of spaghettification.
Some scientists think that at the bottom of a black hole is a point of singularity.
Our earth would be broken apart, molecule by molecule, in a funnel effect leading down
to this dense point of singularity.
We would be stretched out like spaghetti, so thin that we would exist atom on top of
atom.
Others theories that black holes are not holes, but doors to the other side of the universe.
I don’t want to mind boggle you, but as black holes already BEND time and space, many
think they’re FOLDS in time and space and that matter comes out of the other side and
expands outwards…like a big bang.
We know that our universe is expanding, we can see it.
We know that it started in a very hot, dense place and exploded outwards.
Could we have come out of a black hole?
Another theory is that, if earth fell into a black hole, we wouldn’t even notice.
Some scientists believe that instead of being destroyed, any material that touches a black
hole turns into a near perfect hologram.
So far as we are aware and can hypothesis, the only way to escape being sucked in by
a black hole is to travel faster than the speed of its gravitational pull, so faster
than the speed of light, which is something we are not even close to be able to doing.
Our solar system has been doing find for 4 and half billion years, which suggests we
have never come into contact with a black hole yet, so we probably shouldn’t worry
too much.
That being said, there could be a risk of black hole danger on earth.
Scientists have created something called a Large Hadron Collider, which smashes particles
together and is thought to be able to create a black hole.
This collider cost billions of dollars and is designed to help us understand particle
physics and the origins of the universe.
… but it could be powerful enough to generate a miniature black hole.
Hmm.
On that note, we’re going to end the video.
What do you think would happen if the earth fell into a black hole?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments box below.
Also please hit that like button and share this video with your black hole loving friends.
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Life’s Biggest Questions, I am Rebecca Felgate, I’ll
catch you in the next video, but for now, stay curious, stay alert and never ever stop
questioning.
Thanks for watching to the end, why not check out our biggest Science questions playlist
and our biggest what ifs.