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There are two possibilities here: you fall past the event horizon completely unscathed, or you get sizzled into a scorched shadow of space ash by Hawking radiation. Once you’re past the event horizon, there’s no coming out. This is the theoretical edge of a black hole where it’s gravitational force precisely counteracts the effort of light to escape it. Let’s say you’re the one falling in – it all starts with the “event horizon”.
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There are a few theoretical possibilities, and what would happen also depends on your viewpoint – are you the one falling in, or are you a spectator?īoth views would be different, but both are scientifically correct, and happen simultaneously. So, if someone were to go into a black hole, reality would sort of… split. This is the point where the curving of space and time becomes infinite space and time as concepts become meaningless, and the laws of physics, which rely on space and time to be constant, no longer apply. The deeper you go into the burrow, the more warped and mangled it gets until you reach the “singularity”. Therefore, if an object is dense enough (think of all the mountains in the single water droplet!), it can literally curve in on itself and burrow a hole right into the fabric of space. Legendary scientist Albert Einstein determined that gravity, if strong enough, can warp space and time as we know it and cause it to curve. Remember I told you black holes had an exceptionally strong gravitational pull? You’ll be pleased to know our solar system sits firmly in the latter category! So what happens if a person goes into a black hole?Īh, the burning question – hang on to your space helmets because it’s about to get bizarre! Our galaxy, like every other galaxy, is orbiting around a supermassive black hole, the spiral appearing tighter in the center due to the higher gravitational pull these stars are experiencing relative to stars at a further distance. You may be familiar with the shape of our galaxy, the Milky Way it looks like a spiral spinning around a central core – and there’s a reason for this. These black holes have masses that are equal to more than a million of our sun put together and are found at the center of galaxies.
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The largest black holes are referred to as “supermassive”, and their cool name is definitely deserved. There are also “stellar” black holes, which are much larger, and form when the center of very big stars die and collapse in on themselves. Imagine that number of large mountains squashed into the size of a droplet of water… that’s dense! Putting that into perspective: a droplet of water contains 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (two sextillions) atoms of oxygen, and twice that many of hydrogen. There are indeed a few types of black holes – the smallest are as minuscule as just one atom however, they contain the mass of a large mountain. The only way scientists know of their existence is by using specialized telescopes to observe the behavior of stars and gas surrounding them, and how their behavior changes as their distance from the black hole vary. Not planets, not stars, and not even electromagnetic radiation such as light.īecause no light can escape, black holes cannot be seen – they are invisible, appearing black against the background of space. You’ve definitely heard of them – you know they’re a dark, powerful enigma of deep space, but do you actually know what they are and how they work?īlack holes are places in space where the gravity is so immensely strong, due to the massive amount of matter squeezed into them relative to their size, that nothing can escape its pull. Wondering about this cosmic phenomenon is clearly keeping folks awake at night – it’s time to put it to bed. Type “ what happens if a person goes” into Google and you will see this question auto-complete right there as the top hit.
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