would you die if you went into a black hole

Unfortunately, the most likely scenario is that, like the planets, the Sun is ripped apart and joins the planets in the swirling mass of super-heated dust and gas roaring around the black hole. A gravitational tug of war would ensue and, depending on the initial mass of the black hole, there’s a chance the Sun could survive in some shape or form. The final battle, between the black hole and the Sun, wouldn’t be quite so one-sided. Upon reaching Earth’s orbit our planet is all but doomed, reduced to a smouldering uninhabitable magma-laden rock, with Mercury and Venus soon following suit. The intense gravitational pull of the black hole would have torn our planet asunder, causing devastating earthquakes and supervolcanoes the likes of which humanity has never witnessed before. If we couldn’t see the black hole yet, we’d certainly notice the planets suddenly being torn limb from limb.īy the time the black hole reached the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, things would look bleak for us. Thus, any planets unfortunate enough to be caught in its path would be devoured, even those as large as Jupiter. For us residents on Earth though, uh, not so much…ĭespite such a black hole being several thousand times smaller than any of the planets, its mass would be several thousand times greater. Now, the terrifying power of the black hole is all too visible to us on Earth.įor an outsider looking in the event would probably be pretty fun to watch. It’s not until it started to tear gas from the outer gas giant planets that a noticeable accretion disk, a region of super-heated dust and gas, would form around the black hole. Aside from this influx of comets, however, things wouldn’t seem so awry at first.Īs the black hole made its way into the Solar System, it would be invisible to us aside from a slight gravitational lensing effect on distant stars. It’s possible that this would send a large number of comets hurtling inwards towards Earth and the other planets. However, if the black hole passed directly through the Solar System, then things get immeasurably worse.Īt a distance 100,000 times greater than that between Earth and the Sun, the black hole would pass through the Oort Cloud. The orbits of the outer planets and comets would be significantly and possibly disastrously altered, and this would in turn threaten the orbits of the inner planets and even the Sun.

If a black hole like Cygnus X-1 were to stray near the Solar System, within a light-year or so, its gravity would cause chaos. These can be just a dozen or so miles across, with one of the closest to us being Cygnus X-1 about 6,000 light-years away measuring 44 kilometres (27 miles) in diameter. The other type are interstellar black holes, those formed when a large star goes supernova. These don’t really pose any threat to us, until our galaxy collides with another like the Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years. The first are supermassive black holes found churning at the centre of galaxies. There are two predominant types of black hole in the universe. In fact the odds of a black hole devouring our planet are estimated at one in a trillion. How likely is it that a black hole could enter the Solar System? Well, you’d have to define likely it is more likely that the Earth will get swallowed by a black hole than, say, winning the lottery ten times in a row, but less likely than being struck by lightning. An incoming black hole would be invisible until it sucked material from the planets to give it a glowing accretion disk.

Would you die if you went into a black hole