8 Things You've Always Wanted To Know About Black Holes

2. What Would Happen If You Fell In?

You'd die.

We know that much, but as the exact nature of black holes is still up in the air, we can't be exactly sure what a day trip there would be like.

It's generally thought that, despite their terrifying reputation, you probably wouldn't immediately notice falling into a black hole at all. Although, to an outside observer, the "event horizon" looks like a great, black barrier, there's nothing locally special about it and you probably wouldn't even realised you'd crossed it.

After that, however, things might start to get a little more ... strained. After noticing that you can no longer "turn back", the tidal forces on your body would build and build as you moved closer to the centre of the black hole. Eventually, these forces would be so great that even the tiniest distances (like the distance between your individual cells) would be stretched and distorted until you're nothing more that a hot string of plasma the width of one atom.

If that hot string of plasma could somehow observe its surroundings, it would notice that time outside the black hole would appear to be "running faster".

From the outside, an observer would never actually see you fall into the black hole. Due to the enormous distortions in spacetime, time will run at different relative speeds for the observer and the unfortunate black hole explorer. All anyone would see is that you would appear to slow down as you approached the event horizon, you would eventually stop altogether, turn red, and disappear as the light coming from you is red-shifted beyond the visible spectrum.

At least they wouldn't have to witness the spaghettification process, so that's something.

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