• Question: If a astronaut went through a black whole would they survive?

    Asked by Amazing person called Aston Martin to Helen, Hugh, Julian on 20 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      No – they would be spaghettified. As you get nearer the strong gravity would pull your feet away from your head and stretch you out into a long piece of spaghetti like human. There is also no way back, so probably best not to go playing near any black holes!

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 21 Nov 2014:

      What Julian said!! They’d be totally spaghettified by the differences in gravity. The only way to avoid it would be to fall into a really big black hole – where the sort of ‘boundary’ or event horizon of the black hole is out quite far from the centre, where the tidal forces aren’t so strong. If you tried this though, bear in mind the really large black holes which have matter falling onto them emit huge amounts of high energy radiation, like X-rays and gamma rays. It wouldn’t be very pretty. You definitely wouldn’t survive to find Mathew McConaughey on the other side of the ‘event horizon’ looking at books…

Comments