DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE HUMAN “BLACK HOLES”?

DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE HUMAN “BLACK HOLES”?

Everyone gets excited over different things. Some people are ecstatic if they win a prize in a lottery, some if their favourite sport’s team wins a championship, some if they find out they don’t have to pay any income tax. I become practically overwhelmed when a new scientific discovery is announced. Recently, scientists revealed to the public the first image ever made of a black hole. I am still vibrating from viewing the donut with orange icing image that appeared in today’s news. 

My enthusiasm was slightly dampened when I began to ask myself some basic questions about black holes, as I found the answers quite challenging to say the least. Please allow me to share my exploration of this fantastic scientific revelation with some of my litany of questions and Google’s answers. 

What is a black hole? A black hole is a a region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape.

What happens if a person goes into a black hole? As you fall toward the black hole, you move faster and faster, accelerated by its gravity. Your feet feel a stronger gravitational pull than your head, because they are closer to the black hole. If you fall into a supermassive black hole, your body remains intact, even as you cross the event horizon.

Where do things go in a black hole? A black hole has a boundary, called the event horizon. It is where gravity is just strong enough to drag light back, and prevent it escaping. Because nothing can travel faster than light, everything else will get dragged back also. Falling through the event horizon, is a bit like going over Niagara Falls in a canoe.

What's in a black hole? The event horizon is where the escape speed exceeds the speed of light: you'd have to be going faster than light (which is impossible for any bit of matter) to escape the black hole's gravity. A singularity is what all the matter in a black hole gets crushed into.

Can you survive a black hole? Not until you reach the singularity at the heart of one of these objects. However, time will appear to slow down for you as seen from observers on the outside and once you are past the event horizon – the point of no return – there is no way that anything, not even light, can escape the black hole.

What is Spaghettification in black holes? In astrophysics, spaghettification (sometimes referred to as the noodle effect) is the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong non-homogeneous gravitational field; it is caused by extreme tidal forces.

Friends and family, if you have succeeded in reading to this point I applaud you! After reading the above explanations to my questions, I can only confess that any comprehension of the above has been sucked out of my brain into a human black hole (where information you read vanishes, never to be seen again). In other words, I thought that I was reading Sanskrit when I tried to understand the answers. My ability to comprehend scientific explanations has taken a downward spiral comparable to my ability to understand political discourse. The only stimulating part of my research was that the word “spaghettification” can now be added to my vocabulary. I will probably use it inappropriately by referring to it in some blog about cooking Italian food!  

My research Q and A has tempered my enthusiasm and understanding for this big scientific news, but the photo of the donut is mouthwatering!