If you fell into a black hole, theory has long suggested that gravity would stretch you out like spaghetti, though your death would come before you reached singularity. But a 2012 study in Nature suggests that quantum effects would cause the event horizon to act much like a wall of fire, instantly burning anyone to death.
Black holes do not “suck.” Suction is caused by pulling something into a vacuum, which the massive black hole definitely is not. Instead, objects fall into them.
The first object considered to be a black hole is Cygnus X-1. Rockets carrying Geiger counters discovered eight new X-ray sources. In 1971, scientists detected radio emissions coming from Cygnus X-1, and a massive hidden companion was found and identified as a black hole.
Cygnus X-1 was the subject of a 1974 friendly wager between Stephen Hawking and a fellow physicist Kip Thorne, with Hawking betting that the source was not a black hole. In 1990, he conceded defeat. [VIDEO: Final Nail in Stephen Hawking’s Cygnus X-1 Bet?]
Miniature black holes may have formed immediately after the Big Bang. Rapidly expanding space may have squeezed some regions into tiny, dense black holes less massive than the sun.
If a star passes too close to a black hole, it can be torn apart.
Astronomers estimate there are anywhere from 10 million to a billion stellar black holes, with masses roughly three times that of the sun, in the Milky Way.
The interesting relationship betweenstring theory and black holes gives rise to more types of massive giants than found under conventional classical mechanics.
Black holes remain terrific fodder for science fiction books and movies. Check out the science behind the movie “Interstellar,” which relied heavily on theoretical physicist Kip Thorne to bring real science to the Hollywood feature. In fact, work with the special effects of the blockbuster lead to animprovement in the scientific understandingof how distant stars might appear when seen near a fast-spinning black hole.
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