Can a black hole hit us?

Even if a black hole took the place of our Sun, Earth wouldn't get sucked in. If the black hole was the same mass as the Sun, then it would have the same gravity as the Sun. Earth and all the other planets of our Solar System would stay in the same orbit.

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Can a black hole reach us?

The odds are incredibly small, scientists say. "Black holes do not go around in space eating stars, moons and planets. Earth will not fall into a black hole because no black hole is close enough to the solar system for Earth to do that," NASA noted in 2018, adding that the sun isn't big enough to become a black hole.

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What happens if a black hole hits us?

The possibility that a black hole could actually impact Earth may seem straight out of science fiction, but the reality is that microscopic primordial black holes could actually hit Earth. If one did, it wouldn't just impact like an asteroid, it'd pass straight through the entire Earth and exit the other side.

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What's the chance of a black hole hitting Earth?

Given how many black holes we expect are out there and how long our Solar System has been around, that's only about a ~0.000000001% chance, or 1-in-100 billion, that any planet would encounter a black hole over the past 4.5 billion years.

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Are any black holes a threat to Earth?

So, can this or any other black hole pose a threat to Earth? Not really. According to NASA, no black hole is close enough to be a danger to us. Plus, the sun is not massive enough to explode to form a black hole.

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What Happens If A Black Hole Hits Earth?

38 related questions found

Could we survive a black hole?

Death by black hole

Of course, no matter what type of black hole you plunge into, you're ultimately going to get torn apart by its extreme gravity and die a horrible death. No material that falls inside a black hole could survive intact.

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Could Earth survive a black hole?

Ripped apart: The Earth would stand no chance if it encountered a rogue black hole; the cosmic black hole's tidal forces would easily rip the planet apart. Lost in space: Matter piles up in a superheated, rapidly spinning disc before plunging through the horizon of a black hole, never to reappear again.

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How long till a black hole destroys Earth?

And the answer is essentially never, over the entire age of the universe. This probably has not happened. If it had happened, we wouldn't be here. So you know, right away that tells you over 4 billion years it hasn't happened, even once.

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Where do black holes take you?

For all practical purposes the matter has disappeared from the universe. Once inside the black hole's event horizon, matter will be torn apart into its smallest subatomic components and eventually be squeezed into the singularity.

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What's inside a black hole?

Don't let the name fool you: a black hole is anything but empty space. Rather, it is a great amount of matter packed into a very small area - think of a star ten times more massive than the Sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York City.

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What if a tiny black hole hit the Sun?

The likelihood is that a primordial black hole with mass of an asteroid or comet (about 10^21 g) would pass straight through the Sun, generating a small puff of X-rays in the process. Such a burst would be less even than the background rate of X-rays, so it would be impossible for astronomers to see.

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How long does a black hole last?

But don't expect a black hole to disappear any time soon. It takes a shockingly long time for a black hole to shed all of its mass as energy via Hawking radiation. It would take 10100 years, or a googol, for a supermassive black hole to fully disappear.

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Are black holes scary?

We are in absolutely no danger from black holes. They're a bit like tigers – it's a bad idea to stick your head in their mouth, but you're probably not going to meet one on your way to the shops. Unlike tigers, black holes don't hunt. They're not roaming around space eating stars and planets.

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Can anything escape a black hole?

Black holes are dark, dense regions in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing can escape. Not even light can get out of these regions. That is why we cannot see black holes—they are invisible to our eyes. Because nothing can get out of black holes, physicists struggle understanding these objects.

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Has a black hole ever been seen?

The first black hole ever discovered was Cygnus X-1, located within the Milky Way in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. Astronomers saw the first signs of the black hole in 1964 when a sounding rocket detected celestial sources of X-rays according to NASA.

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What is the closest we got to a black hole?

Gaia BH1 is the nearest black hole to Earth ever discovered — the next closest is around 3,200 light-years away. But it's probably not the closest that exists, or even the closest we'll ever find. Astronomers think there are about 100 million black holes in the Milky Way, but almost all of them are invisible.

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What is beyond a black hole?

At the center of a black hole the gravity is so strong that, according to general relativity, space-time becomes so extremely curved that ultimately the curvature becomes infinite. This results in space-time having a jagged edge, beyond which physics no longer exists -- the singularity.

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What is at the end of a black hole?

The singularity at the center of a black hole is the ultimate no man's land: a place where matter is compressed down to an infinitely tiny point, and all conceptions of time and space completely break down. And it doesn't really exist. Something has to replace the singularity, but we're not exactly sure what.

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Is space infinite?

Because space isn't curved they will never meet or drift away from each other. A flat universe could be infinite: imagine a 2D piece of paper that stretches out forever. But it could also be finite: imagine taking a piece of paper, making a cylinder and joining the ends to make a torus (doughnut) shape.

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How many years is 1 light year?

For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). That is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it!

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What happens if Earth stops spinning?

At the Equator, the earth's rotational motion is at its fastest, about a thousand miles an hour. If that motion suddenly stopped, the momentum would send things flying eastward. Moving rocks and oceans would trigger earthquakes and tsunamis. The still-moving atmosphere would scour landscapes.

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Is Spaghettification painful?

Either way, spaghettification leads to a painful conclusion. When the tidal forces exceed the elastic limits of your body, you'll snap apart at the weakest point, probably just above the hips. You'll see your lower half floating next to you, and you'll see it begin to stretch anew as tidal forces latch onto it.

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How long is 1 minute in a black hole?

on edge of Black Hole. Space and time are intertwined, called space-time, and gravity has the ability to stretch space-time. Objects with a large mass will be able to stretch space-time to the point where our perception of it changes, known as time dilation.

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Do wormholes exist?

While researchers have never found a wormhole in our universe, scientists often see wormholes described in the solutions to important physics equations. Most prominently, the solutions to the equations behind Einstein's theory of space-time and general relativity include wormholes.

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