Can black holes kill you, are there any near Earth and how big are they?
BLACK holes have fascinated both scientists and sci-fi writers for generations because, quite frankly, they are terrifying.
Earlier this week, the Event Horizon telescope captured the world’s first ever photograph of a black hole – and it’s been a hop topic ever since. But how close is this black hole, why are they so scary and should we be worried? Here’s everything you need to know.
Can black holes kill you?
You’d most likely be dead before you ever got close due to the immense gravitational pull of a black hole.
According to scientists, black holes are so strong your body would be pulled apart even before you got pulled in.
As you got closer, the difference in gravity between your head and your feet would stretch you out like a piece of chewing gum.
Scientists call this process “spaghettification”.
You eventually become a stream of subatomic particles that swirl into the black hole like water down a plug.
According to TV physicist Neil De Grasse Tyson: “As you get closer and closer, the force of gravity grows astronomically. You stay whole until the stretching force exceeds the molecular bonds of your body’s flesh.
“At that moment, your body would snap into two segments. Everything of you that ever was gets funnelled to the black hole’s centre.
“Not only have you been ripped in half – you’ve been extruded through the fabric of space and time like toothpaste through a tube.”
However, this isn’t true in all cases – you see, the gravitational pull of a black hole depends on its mass; the smaller the black hole, the higher the density, meaning a stronger gravitational force.
Therefore, if you somehow found yourself near a bigger black hole, the force of gravity would not kill you, in other words, you wouldn’t die from spaghettification.
Avi Loeb, chair of astronomy at Harvard University, explained to Space.com: “You wouldn’t “feel such forces to a significant degree.”
However, he pointed out that while you wouldn’t die before reaching the event horizon of the black hole, other hazards around it would kill you.
So, probably best to steer clear of black holes.
Are there any black holes near Earth?
While black holes might be the most terrifying beasts lurking in outer space, don’t panic as there aren’t any near planet Earth.
The one photographed by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is about 300million trillion miles away from our planet.
That particular black hole is so far away, that taking a photo of it is equivalent to snapping a DVD on the surface of the moon.
The closest black hole to Earth is Cygnus X-1 which is 6,000 light years away and is approximately 15 times the size of the Sun.
However, it is in our solar system, the Milky Way.
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How big are black holes?
Scientists believe they vary in size.
The one snapped by EHT is 24billion miles across – 3million times the size of Earth.
The nearest super massive black hole is Sagittarius A which is 25,640 light years away.
It’s been calculated it is 41m miles in diameter, four million times the mass of the Sun.
