What would happen if a star fell into a black hole?
The tidal forces in that black hole's gravitational field stretch the star, pulling it so hard that it's torn apart. The star debris then falls onto the black hole.
When a star wanders too close to a black hole, the intense gravity will stretch the star out until it becomes a long river of hot gas, as shown in this animation. The gas is then whipped around the black hole and is gradually pulled into orbit, forming a bright disk.
Astronomers have found many stars that have been completely torn apart by encounters with black holes (so-called tidal disruption events), but there are very few reported cases of near misses, where the star likely survived.
However, models predict that rare stars at least 40 times heftier than our sun should plummet directly into black holes without exploding, because their massive outer layers snuff the shock wave like the heavy lid of a pressure cooker.
What would happen if something fell into a black hole?
The tidal forces as you approached the singularity would be so powerful and unpredictable that not only would you be torn apart, but so would space and time. They would fragment into droplets, destroying any concept of past and future. Things are better, however, if you fall into a black hole long after it has formed.
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Is spaghettification painful?
Either way, spaghettification leads to a painful conclusion. When the tidal forces exceed the elastic limits of your body, you'll snap apart at the weakest point, probably just above the hips. You'll see your lower half floating next to you, and you'll see it begin to stretch anew as tidal forces latch onto it.
Within any black hole is the central point, the singularity, which has infinite gravity and where mass is compressed into an infinitely small point. There, it is game over. There's no surviving. And therefore the idea of traveling through time and space, via black hole or wormhole, don't really register in reality.
What are the chances of Earth being consumed by a black hole? Experts who spoke to Newsweek said there is practically zero chance of the Earth ever colliding with a black hole before it is swallowed by the sun in around five billion years' time.
A black hole is a region in space where the pulling force of gravity is so strong that light is not able to escape. The strong gravity occurs because matter has been pressed into a tiny space. This compression can take place at the end of a star's life. Some black holes are a result of dying stars.
Fortunately, this has never happened to anyone — black holes are too far away to pull in any matter from our solar system. But scientists have observed black holes ripping stars apart, a process that releases a tremendous amount of energy.
For the supermassive black holes that we find at the centres of most galaxies, it could take as long as 10100 years for them to evaporate, or 'die'. However, Hawking radiation is yet to be conclusively discovered and so black hole evaporation remains a theoretical process for now.
What happens to its stuff when black hole vanishes? For all their extraordinary power, black holes are not immortal. They have a life cycle just like we do. Forty years ago Stephen Hawking, the world's foremost expert on black holes, announced that they evaporate and shrink because they emit radiation.
The aftermath of the star being "spaghettified" is like nothing astronomers have ever seen. Three years after a black hole shredded and devoured a small star, the cosmic titan is lighting up the night sky with violent emissions as it burps out material from its messy stellar meal.
The fate of anyone falling into a black hole would be a painful “spaghettification,” an idea popularized by Stephen Hawking in his book “A Brief History of Time.” In spaghettification, the intense gravity of the black hole would pull you apart, separating your bones, muscles, sinews and even molecules.
The negative square root solution inside the horizon represents a white hole. A white hole is a black hole running backwards in time. Just as black holes swallow things irretrievably, so also do white holes spit them out. White holes cannot exist, since they violate the second law of thermodynamics.
Even if it were a black hole it couldn't consume much of the Sun quickly. But it would affect things over time. A black hole in a star would consume matter in the stellar core and grow over time. If it could grow quickly on a cosmological scale, then it could consume a star completely.
When matter falls into or comes closer than the event horizon of a black hole, it becomes isolated from the rest of space-time. It can never leave that region. For all practical purposes the matter has disappeared from the universe.
“The elements left behind are clues we can follow to figure out what sort of star met its demise.” Astronomers have found many examples of “tidal disruption events” in recent years, where the gravitational forces from a massive black hole destroy a star.
No, it is currently understood that no one can survive being thrown into a black hole. The gravitational forces near a black hole are extreme, leading to a phenomenon known as ``spaghettification,'' where objects are stretched and compressed due to the intense tidal forces.
Ripped apart: The Earth would stand no chance if it encountered a rogue black hole; the cosmic black hole's tidal forces would easily rip the planet apart. Lost in space: Matter piles up in a superheated, rapidly spinning disc before plunging through the horizon of a black hole, never to reappear again.
We are in absolutely no danger from black holes. They're a bit like tigers – it's a bad idea to stick your head in their mouth, but you're probably not going to meet one on your way to the shops. Unlike tigers, black holes don't hunt. They're not roaming around space eating stars and planets.
Near a black hole, the slowing of time is extreme. From the viewpoint of an observer outside the black hole, time stops. For example, an object falling into the hole would appear frozen in time at the edge of the hole. Inside a black hole is where the real mystery lies.
So planets could potentially form around black holes, but that's no guarantee that they offer a life-friendly environment. On Earth, living things are hugely dependent on the light and warmth from the Sun to survive. Without the glow of a star, life around a black hole would likely need an alternative source of energy.
Black holes are regions in space where an enormous amount of mass is packed into a tiny volume. This creates a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape. They are created when giant stars collapse, and perhaps by other methods that are still unknown.
