Myths about Black Holes
The Sun will not become a black hole because its mass of 1 sun is under the Chandrasekar limit (1.4 suns). Instead, the sun will slowly evolve and live out its old age as a white dwarf. But imagine that some how we replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass. What would happen? Would our solar system be sucked up into the black hole? No. The gravitational field around the sun would stay the same. Same
mass, same gravitational field.
The Big Bang simulations at Brookhaven will create small black holes that will destroy the Earth! True, the super collider at Brookhaven can recreate situations only possible in the early Universe. But the formation of miniature black holes is very, very unlikely in nature. Even more unlikely in such a small scale replica of the Big Bang.. Yet, let's suppose that a small black hole the size of a subatomic particle was created. What then? The Earth's gravity would pull this small object toward the center of the earth. Because of its extremely small subatomic size, it would easily pass by most of the Earth's atoms without causing much of a problem. But if we created a black hole the size of a golf ball, it would eat
its way to the center in a "snowball fashion" as its size would continuously
grow from devouring more and more of the Earth. Remember, the more you
feed a black hole, the bigger it gets. Once at the center, the entire Earth
would probably begin to collapse into the black hole.
When falling into a black hole, I can see the fate of Universe flash before me! No. Although you might see your life flashing before your eyes. Time doesn't slow down for you. You will slow down according to people outside the black hole, but you won't notice any difference. Your reference frame stays the same so you are still moving at the same speed toward your demise. But, pretend we can some how defy gravity and stay right at the event
horizon. Then we would have a nice blue shifted view of the end of the
Universe.
If I go into a black hole, I come out of a white hole! No. A black hole is just a gravitational field from an object with infinite density. A white hole would be an object that was the exact mathematical opposite of a black hole: reaches into the past, anti-gravitational forces, and so on. Does such an object exist in nature? Doubtful. It's even more doubtful that one would be connected at the throat of a black hole. Anyway before you would ever reach the singularity, you would be ripped apart because of tidal gravitation. Your pieces would then become smaller and smaller and smaller as your particles are crushed into an infinite density. Continue to Having Fun with Black Holes. Back to the top of the page or the Myths outline. |
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