• Question: what would happen if the earth got sucked into a black hole?

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

      Nate Bastian answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      That would be bad. Everything on earth would be destroyed, down to the atomic level.

    • Photo: Sam Connolly

      Sam Connolly answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      If you get very close to a black hole, because the gravity is so strong you get an effect where the closest parts of the Earth would be pulled towards the black hole much harder than the bits on the far side. The effect would be to rip the Earth apart into little pieces, which would spiral around the black hole until they fell into it, at which point they’d be squashed down into an incredibly small space, never to return. So let’s hope it doesn’t happen! Luckily it’s incredibly unlikely!

    • Photo: Natasha Stephen

      Natasha Stephen answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      ^ Very bad!

    • Photo: Sarah Casewell

      Sarah Casewell answered on 23 Jun 2014:


      Not good things…. We’d get ripped to pieces pretty quickly I think.

    • Photo: Roberto Trotta

      Roberto Trotta answered on 24 Jun 2014:


      Another interesting thing to know is that time goes more slowly near a black hole — a consequence of the extreme gravity there.

      So as you approach the black hole, time for you slows down, hence you’d be seeing everything else in the Universe speeding up, just like a movie seen in fast forward. You could effectively time travel to the future, and see the entire future of the universe unfold very quickly in front of your eyes.

      Eventually of course you’ll die. Either spaghettified by gravity (your toes get pulled more strongly than your head and you are ripped apart), or incinerated by a firewall of energy. But hey, it’s been a great ride!

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