Indeed, these are the only three parameters that an outside observer can ever know about since all other information about anything that goes into making up a black hole is lost. There are three properties of a black hole that are (in principle) measurable: their mass, their spin (or angular momentum), and their overall electronic charge. Invariably though, the one item that is almost assured to come up are the largely gruesome ways in which black holes might theoretically affect human beings and the Earth itself. Many of the questions I am asked regard how “true” science fiction concerning black holes might be, and whether worm holes, such as those featured in Stargate, are real or not. And interest regarding black holes will surely grow now that gravitational waves have been discovered. The gravity is so strong, the side facing the black hole would be pulled up into space, shredding the planet completely into smaller and smaller pieces, until it became a smeared-out ring of fine debris orbiting the black hole until eventually disappearing inside.Black holes have long been a source of much excitement and intrigue. That means our solar system - the sun included - would be disrupted and possibly flung off into space well before Earth itself got close.īut if it did, the tidal forces would tear the Earth apart well before it hit the black hole itself. theoretical speculation about miniature black holes aside, every black hole we know of is at least 5x the mass of the entire sun. And that one, and the entire galaxy along with it, is itself moving through space!Īs for what would happen if Earth came upon one: well. All the smaller black holes in the galaxy - and there are many, many thousands - move through space orbiting the big one at the center. This is what makes it "black" to us.īut it can still move like any other massive object. The sun is not heavy enough to ever reach this point, but in the case of a black hole, as you get close to it, the gravity eventually becomes so strong that not even light can escape anymore. Remember that as you get closer and closer to a massive object, the force of gravity gets stronger and stronger. In the case of the sun, it is very heavy, but it does move through space, orbiting the center of our galaxy at about 828,000 km/hour. Just like the sun, that mass gives it gravity which causes things to orbit or get pulled towards it. There isn't anything particular special about a black hole in terms of how it moves or effects objects around it, at least when seen from the outside.Ī black hole is simply an incredibly massive object. They probably never will, but that's the reason we do science! We never know what we're going to find until we look for it! In fact, these encounters may even be detectable in particle physics detectors, but no one has seen any yet. Someone even suggested the Tunguska event was a black hole, superheating the gas around it with its intense gravity as it punched through the atmosphere. Their Schwarzschild radii would be literally atomic, so they wouldn't really 'eat' much when they encounter the earth, and they'd end up passing straight through.
On the other hand, really small black holes with the mass of small asteroids would be so abundant that they'd strike the earth fairly frequently, probably as frequently as asteroids. The earth could, in principle, be kicked out of the solar system and freeze in the darkness of interstellar space.
If they got close enough, their gravity could disrupt the planets' orbits around the sun. Though black holes as massive as planets or greater would be very rare, they would orbit the galaxy and could pass through the solar system just like anything else. So called 'primordial black holes' could have virtually any mass, from the mass of small asteroids up to thousands of solar masses. In fact, one leading candidate for dark matter is lots of black holes which formed in the early universe. They're massive objects, and they move around and orbit the galaxy in the same way. It's a common misconception that black holes are somehow 'pinned' to space, or maybe something a special square marking on a chess board that any piece dies if it steps on.īlack holes are, in many respects, just like the sun and earth and everything else.
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