Oddly enough, both scenarios are correct. From an observer’s point of view, you would be burned to a crisp by radiation and stretched into a long string. So, from your point of view, you would have a quiet fall and a quick death. If the black hole is a supermassive one composed of hundreds of millions of solar masses, you will live quite normally, until you hit the centre of the singularity. Of course, this only happens if the black hole is a small one, just a dozen or so solar masses. You are unlikely to survive the experience. These tidal forces will get stronger as you approach the centre and eventually will stretch you into a long string of matter. This happens because the gravity increases faster the nearer you get to the centre and the forces on your feet are greater than the forces on your head. As you fall deeper into the black hole, you will start to feel a greater tug on your feet than on your head. However, you will no longer be able to escape. Even when you cross the event horizon, you will probably notice nothing, depending upon the mass of the black hole. Eventually, the observer will see you freeze in position as time stops for you.įrom the point of view of someone falling into a black hole, things seem normal - at least for a while. When you cross the “event horizon,” the point of no return for a black hole, you will move slower and slower as time slows for you, from the point of view of the observer. But we have come to some startling ideas that are consistent with the known laws of physics.įor instance, what happens when you fall into a black hole?Īn observer watching you will see you being stretched and distorted as you fall closer. All we can do is theorize about the inside of black holes. We know nothing about the conditions inside a black hole because nothing can escape, not even light. The gravitational field inside a black hole is so intense that it makes no mathematical sense. When this happens, you have what is called a singularity, or a black hole. If the mass gets too great, it can crush the matter into a point that has no dimensions and the matter effectively disappears from our universe. If you gather enough mass in one place, you can get gravitational forces that are so severe they can crush matter into ever smaller areas. While this is not important in our everyday experience, on cosmic scales, it can become quite significant. Double the mass, double the gravitational force it generates. The more mass you have, the greater the gravitational attraction to that mass. Gravity also grows weaker with the square of the distance from the source of the gravity, but it is different from the other forces in that it is cumulative. Electromagnetic forces do have long-distance influence, but they grow weaker with the square of the distance from the source. The strong and weak forces only affect objects within the scale of the atom. While these fundamental forces are so much stronger than gravity, these other forces get weaker as you move away from their source. The simple electromagnetic force that moves motors and causes compass needles to point to the north is roughly 43 orders of magnitude greater than the force of gravity. The strong and weak forces and electromagnetism are many orders of magnitude stronger than gravity. While a falling person has gravity foremost in his mind, in fact, gravity is the weakest of the fundamental forces in the universe. Gravity is a strange force that controls the shape of planets, the orbits of these same planets, the organization of stars in galaxies and, at the largest scales, the distribution of matter throughout the universe. We don’t often think of gravity, unless we are about to fall or at risk of falling. If you are standing at the top of a tall building, the force of gravity is probably foremost in your mind.
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