Described by some as “the most spectacular way to die in space.”
If you think about it, black holes suck.
I mean, they literally suck and grab a hold of anything that gets near it. The universe is cluttered with black holes and they're waiting there quietly, hoping to swallow up anything that dares to get a closer look.
Astronomers from the Chandra Observatory recently caught an impressive glimpse at two hot gas jets bursting from a stellar-mass black hole at 80 percent the speed of light. The material spewed out of the black hole was equivalent to 500 Empire State Buildings.
The burst created a hypnotic cosmic flare that lit up the internet with several questions and theories.
Now that they've shot out of the black hole, are these gas jets slamming into anything else in space?
Is the black hole burping? Some believe black holes get indigestion.
The black hole that's been in the spotlight as of late is located about 10,000 light-years away in the Milky Way. It's secluded and measures about half the mass of the Sun (it's pretty massive). In addition, it is a stellar-mass black hole, which means it formed in the aftermath of the gravitational collapse of a star.
So, let's say you are floating in space and happen to run into a not-so-friendly black hole that's ready to suck you in like a Hoover vacuum. What would happen to you? What do you suppose you'd see once you've been taken in and surrounded by its darkness?
Here's one answer: Your body would be shredded apart into the smallest possible pieces.
That's according to Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. He also wrote the book Death by Black Hole and describes the experience as “the most spectacular way to die in space.”
Getting shredded into a million little pieces is a little underwhelming to me because I always imagined I'd be transferred to another time, world, or universe. At least, that's how it's been shown in movies.
Here's are some films I find fascinating. They've sucked me in, so to speak.
The Black Hole (1979)
Did you know this was Disney's very first PG rated film? Yeah, everything before this was rated G for the general audience. Once Star Wars: A New Hope hit the theaters, Disney wanted to make something similar — riding off the success of George Lucas' masterpiece.
Have you ever seen this cheesy, yet awesome, film? It's on Disney+ if you're interested.
Event Horizon (1997)
Here's a quick science lesson: The event horizon is “the edge of a black hole or the point of no return.” If you happen to get sucked in and make it past the event horizon, not even light can escape the black hole’s gravitational "tugging."
That's pretty intense and scary, right? Well, I haven't watched Event Horizon in years, but I remember it being intensely scary.
Star Trek (2009)
The Star Trek series hasn't really dabbled in black holes, but J.J. Abrams’s 2009 reboot of the franchise makes it look pretty neat. The villain of the film creates an artificial black hole out of “red matter” to destroy the planet Vulcan.
Well, things don't go as planned. A real black hole creates a time warp that sends Mr. Spock back in time to help Captain Kirk and his own younger self try to stop the villian.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Perhaps one of my favorite sci-fi films and its "stargate sequence" is worth watching alone if you can't commit to the movie's length. I'm not even sure if this is considered a black hole, but it's cool as heck.
I had the opportunity to watch Stanley Kubrick's film in theaters during its 50th-anniversary run, and I fell in love with it even more. It's amazing to think it was originally released in 1968.
Insterstellar (2014)
This Kubrick-inspired sci-fi adventure from Christopher Nolan involves black holes in its key plot point. The deep-space crew is sent to explore a wormhole leading to other potentially habitable planets.
One cool tidbit about the film is that Nolan spent a lot of time ensuring that the science of the film checked out, and its rendering of the black hole was considered by many to be the most realistic yet in a fiction film.
In conclusion, if you were to be grabbed by a nearby black hole, you'd eventually be ripped into tiny pieces, but others say your last moments would be like being on the inside of a distorted, one-way mirror.
No one on the other side of the black hole would be able to see you, but you’d be able to view them. Meanwhile, the gravitational pull inside the dark mass would bend the light and distort your last moments of vision.
I imagine everything looking like a tye-dye t-shirt.
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