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Have you ever wondered what would happen if you got close enough to a black hole to get sucked into it.
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When a huge star dies, its core collapses into an infinitely small point (singularity), with gravity so strong that even light can’t escape. That is a black hole.
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The gravity at its surface would be so massive that an object would have to travel faster than the speed of light to escape. It can be visualised as a waterfall in space.
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Imagine you’re floating in space, getting closer and closer to a black hole. At first, you wouldn’t even realise it. From your perspective, time is moving normally.
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To an observer, as you float closer to the event horizon, your movement will appear slowed down. You would also appear red in colour to the external observer.
Image: NASA
To the observer, nothing ever goes into a black hole. The object approaching the black hole starts to become redshifted, to a point where the red shift is beyond the visible spectrum.
Image: NASA
Now, you’ve crossed the event horizon—a boundary beyond which nothing—not even light-can escape, also called the event horizon.
Image: NASA
Now that you’re at a point of no return, the black hole’s gravity will stretch you—in a process called spagettification, as you fall towards the singularity.
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As you get nearer the singularity, the gravity stretches you to a point where your body breaks into sub-atomic particles and beyond, and these pieces still race towards the singularity.
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Singularity is where our current physics breaks apart. According to Einstein, it’s not a place; rather, it's a moment in time. It’s where space and time will cease to exist.
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What happens next, well, nobody truly knows. Our current models of physics cannot explain the singularity.
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Thanks for reading!
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