Terrifying NASA simulation lets you ‘plunge’ into a black hole to a ‘point of no return’ that would destroy your body

NASA has revealed an impressive and mind-bending simulation of what it would be like to fall into a black hole.

The terrifying journey is one that (hopefully) none of us will ever take – but now you can pretend courtesy of a new video.

NASA’s visualization follows a camera as it approaches, orbits, and ultimately crosses the event horizon: the “point of no return“.

It takes place in a monstrous supermassive black hole like Sagittarius A*, the one at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

“Thanks to a new immersive visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer, viewers can dive into the event horizon, the point of no return of a black hole,” the NASA blog explained.

There are two videos released as a pair of simulations.

The first details a dive into the black hole, while the second sees the viewer narrowly escape.

“People often ask about this, and simulating these hard-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to real consequences in the real universe,” said NASA astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman.

“So I simulated two different scenarios, one in which a camera – a stand-in for a daring astronaut – misses the event horizon and shoots back.

“And the one where it crosses the border, sealing its fate.”

SIZED

The supermassive black hole in the video is 4.3 million times the mass of the Earthis Sun.

That may sound scary, but Schnittman says it’s actually much better to fall into this type of black hole than a smaller one.

“If you have a choice, you want to fall into a supermassive black hole,” explained Schnittman.

“Stellar-mass black holes, which contain up to about 30 solar masses, have much smaller event horizons and stronger tidal forces, which can destroy approaching objects before they reach the horizon.”

NASA explains: “This is because the gravitational pull at the end of an object closest to the black hole is much stronger than at the other end.

If an astronaut flew a spacecraft on this 6-hour round trip while her colleagues on a mothership stayed away from the black hole, she would return 36 minutes younger than her colleagues.

Jeremy SchnittmanAstrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

“Falling objects stretch like noodles, a process astrophysicists call spaghettification.”

HELL HOLE

The event horizon in this video is approximately 25 million kilometers wide – and is surrounded by a hot swirling disk. gas.

In the simulation, the camera starts about 640 million kilometers away.

two

Normally, it would take about three hours for the camera to fall to the event horizon – completing almost two 30-minute orbits.

But NASA notes: “For anyone observing from afar, they would never get there.

“As spacetime becomes increasingly distorted near the horizon, the camera image slows down and then appears to freeze a little earlier.

“This is why astronomers originally referred to black holes as ‘frozen stars’.”

At this point, the laws of physics as we understand them begin to collapse.

“As soon as the camera crosses the horizon, its destruction by spaghettification occurs in just 12.8 seconds,” explains Schnittman.

“From there, it’s just 79,500 miles (128,000 kilometers) to the singularity. This final leg of the journey is over in the blink of an eye.”

IS TIME OVER?

In the second video, the camera does not cross the event horizon.

And if the camera were a person in a spaceship, the situation would be even stranger.

NASA notes: “If an astronaut flew in a spacecraft on this 6-hour round trip while her colleagues in a mothership remained away from the black hole, she would return 36 minutes younger than her colleagues. gravitational source and when it moves close to the speed of light.

And Schnittman adds: “This situation could be even more extreme.

“If the black hole were to spin rapidly, like the one shown in the 2014 film ‘Interstellar,’ it would return many years younger than its companions.”