NASA's 'insane' simulation of falling into a black hole is 'giving viewers anxiety'
It's not like Interstellar makes it look
Featured Image Credit: NASA
It feels like the great space race is on once again.
While it was once American versus the USA, it’s now SpaceX versus Blue Origin.
We know relatively little about the cosmos, but as we learn more each day, we realize just how terrifying space can be.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration continues to take us to the stars, and with it, teach us a little along the way.
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There are plenty of harrowing simulations out there, like what would happen when you die in space, what elevators to space could look like, and what it would be like to die on every planet.
Now, NASA has revealed a fascinating simulation of what would happen if you were sucked into a black hole.
The video was created by a NASA supercomputer and shows the moment when you plunge into the event horizon. This is known as a black hole’s point of no return.
Following Einstein’s general theory of relativity, we see the bizarre effects where things are stretched out.
In reality, any astronaut unlucky enough to find themself entering a black hole would be subjected to ‘spaghettification’. This tidal effect is caused by strong gravitational fields found near a black hole, and for anyone who saw what happened to John Krasinski’s Mister Fantastic during Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, you’ll get the idea.
Astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman created the visualizations, showing off the effect of being pulled into a black hole. Explaining what it’s like, Schnittman said: “People often ask about this, and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual consequences in the real universe.
“So I simulated two different scenarios, one where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out, and one where it crosses the boundary, sealing its fate.”
NASA focused on a supermassive black hole with a mass that’s 4.3 million times bigger than our Sun. To put it into context, it’s the same as a monster that sits at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
This black hole’s event horizon is 16 million miles across, which is around 17% of the distance from Earth to the Sun.
The visualization shows a swirling cloud of hot gas that’s known as an accretion disk.
Alongside glowing photon rings, they form part of the simulation to show off the spaghettification.
Schnittman says you’d actually want to fall into a supermassive black hole when compared to others, adding: “Stellar-mass black holes, which contain up to about 30 solar masses, possess much smaller event horizons and stronger tidal forces, which can rip apart approaching objects before they get to the horizon.”
While the camera takes around three real-time hours to fall into the event horizon, those observing would never make it. NASA explains how space-time gets more distorted the closer you come to the event horizon, meaning the image of the camera would slow until it seemingly freezes. Astronomers originally called black holes ‘frozen stars’.
When it was shared on Reddit, one viewer said: “This gave me anxiety.”
Another added: “I remember when I first saw Interstellar, I felt like I got out of touch with reality for a few hours. Time travel is crazy.”
Someone else concluded: “Fun watching this while being spaghettified.. “
Either way, we don’t fancy a trip to a black hole due to not wanting our organs to be turned into fleshy spaghetti.