What Happens If You Fall Into a Black Hole
One of the greatest misconceptions about black holes is that they are some form of interstellar object, wormhole, dent in space, or something in between. However, the explanation of a black hole is simpler than any of these. A black hole is simply the absence of light. They are formed by the collapse of massive stars. Once these stars have exhausted all their nuclear fuel, they can no longer support themselves against their own gravity, causing the star to collapse in on itself to a infinitely small point in space called a singularity. The singularity has an infite density, causing the black hole to have an incredibly strong gravitational force that sucks everything toward the singularity, including light. Nothing can escape.
Astronomical Anomaly
Black holes are not an astronomical anomaly, rather, they are abundant in the universe. In the Milky Way Galaxy, which is the galaxy home to Earth, there are no fewer than 100 million black holes, with sizes ranging from 4 solar masses to 4 million solar masses (a solar mass being the mass of the Sun). This is actually fairly small for a galaxy of our size. The largest black hole discovered is about 30 billion solar masses. But not to worry, the nearest black hole to Earth is only 1,600 light-years away, so we are okay… for now.
Journey to the Singularity
If you somehow find yourself in a situation where you are floating around in space, you look over your shoulder, and you see a massive black hole, this is what you can expect to happen next.
The first destination on your journey to the center of a black hole is the event horizon. This is a point around the black hole where the gravitational force is so strong that everything that passes this point will inevitably ‘fall’ into the black hole, even light. This is the point of no escape. This may be devastating news to hear, however, scientifically something very interesting is happening here. Time and space swap roles. Time doesn’t exist within the confines of a black hole, it can act in any direction like space. Space, after the event horizon, acts like time, just as time is always relatively moving forward, and you will always end up in the future no matter what you do. Once you have passed the event horizon, you will always be moving forward toward a certain point in space no matter what you do.
As you are moving closer and closer to the singularity, from an outside perspective, it will be as if you never crossed the event horizon. This is because, as mentioned before, nothing can escape past the event horizon, even light. Your body becomes frozen in time and will slowly fade out as the light dissipates.
Once you have entered the black hole, you are on your own. No one knows what happens as it is impossible to observe. One theory is that on the other side of a black hole is a white hole where everything that gets sucked into a black hole gets thrown into a different universe effectively as a big bang. However, this is wishful thinking. The likelihood is that you will get crushed to a point of singularity of infinite density.
Theoretical Physics
One thing to mention is that all this is completely theoretical. The reality is that your body will be unable to withstand the immense gravitational pull of a black hole. You will be stretched and turned into spaghetti before you get anywhere near it.
Black holes are cool… just don’t touch them