Why would somebody falling right into a stellar-mass black hole be spaghettified, however somebody crossing the event horizon of a supermassive black hole wouldn’t really feel a lot discomfort?
Robert Walty
Stephens Metropolis, Virginia
First, what precisely causes spaghettification? This course of is the results of tidal forces, or the distinction in gravity between two factors.
Because it seems, there’s a comparatively easy equation that describes the tidal acceleration {that a} physique of size d would really feel, based mostly on its distance from a given object with mass M: a = 2GMd/R3, the place a is the tidal acceleration, G is the gravitational constant, and R is the physique’s distance to the middle of the article (with mass M).
For a baseline, let’s calculate the tidal acceleration that an roughly 6-foot-tall (1.8 meters) particular person feels between their head and their ft whereas on the floor of Earth. Plugging within the numbers, it comes out to about 0.0000055 meter/second2. Now, how would tidal forces have an effect on that very same particular person falling right into a stellar-mass black hole of 1 solar mass and an event horizon radius of 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers), versus that very same particular person falling right into a supermassive black hole that’s 100 million solar lots with an event horizon radius of 183 million miles (295 million km)?
Within the former case, the tidal acceleration is round 19.6 billion m/s2. And for the supermassive black hole, it’s solely about 0.0000019 m/s2.
So, for an individual falling ft first right into a stellar-mass black hole, the tidal forces stretch them out into an extended, skinny line resembling spaghetti. However when falling right into a supermassive black hole, the tidal acceleration they really feel is even smaller than what we expertise on Earth!
Caitlyn Buongiorno
Affiliate Editor
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