• Question: Could we be sucked into a black hole?

    Asked by to Nat, Nate, Roberto, Sam, Sarah on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sam Connolly

      Sam Connolly answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      It’s extremely unlikely, luckily! Even the very biggest black holes, which are billions of times heavier than the sun, only suck in things which are very close to them compared to say the distance between the stars in our galaxy. This is because gravity’s strength goes down very quickly as you get further away from something. There are a lot of black holes in our galaxy, but not compared to the number of stars and the amount of space there is – the nearest ones are a few thousand light years away, but the nearest stars are only a few light years away. And to suck us in, the average black hole would have to be closer to us than the sun, which is less than a millionth of a light year! So we’d have to be very unlucky for one to pass us close enough to suck us in!

    • Photo: Natasha Stephen

      Natasha Stephen answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      I believe it is technically possible but just not very likely as they’re outside our solar system by quite a considerable distance! We’re much more likely on Earth to be hit by a rogue asteroid or meteor than get sucked into a black hole, and even that is very unlikely!

    • Photo: Roberto Trotta

      Roberto Trotta answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      Not right now, because the closest black hole to us is in the centre of the Galaxy. This is 24,000 light years away, so fortunately this one is not going to suck us in any time soon!

      But we could get sucked into a black hole if we produced one accidentally in the lab. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have made careful calculations to make sure that when they switched on the machine they were not going to create any mini-black hole. Fortunately they found that it was not going to happen, so they could do their experiments and they found the Higgs boson they were looking for!

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