What Would Happen if you Fell Into a Black Hole

By Aanya Shahdadpuri

Just a warning before you read this: you might never be able to eat spaghetti again. 

The process of falling into a black hole is nothing like what they show in the movies. And while the closest known black hole is around 1,000 light years from Earth, it doesn’t hurt (actually, it kinda does) to know a little bit more about what would happen if you happened to find yourself close to one. 

The first picture of a black hole was actually only taken recently on April 10, 2019. Since the black hole is virtually invisible to the human eye, the only way to capture its true likeness was through technology. Scientists used the Event Horizon Telescope—a telescope that is the size of a planet, made up of eight sites around the world—to take a picture. It was able to capture the black hole by the way its intense gravitational pull bent all surrounding space matter towards it, including light. With this picture and certified evidence on how black holes operated, scientists were able to cement their understanding of what could happen inside a black hole.

Essentially, a black hole is created after a star burns out and collapses in on itself. This reaction causes an enormous amount of matter to condense into a small space, leading it to have an extremely dense gravitational pull. Black holes are strong enough to eat light and centralize entire galaxies including our Milky Way. So what would happen to you if you fell into one?

Well, first, you have to understand a couple of terms. The event horizon is the last threshold you would be able to reach before getting sucked into the black hole, with its immense gravitational pull. In stellar black holes once you pass this line, there’s no going back. However, in supermassive black holes, you wouldn’t be ripped apart… yet. 

Past this line, which is usually only made visible through gas clouds and a few stars, is a miniscule point called the singularity. This is usually the point where the laws of physics start to fold in on themselves. From here on, you wouldn’t be able to resist the pull of the black hole anymore. You would get sucked into the black hole and your body would undergo a reaction called spaghettification (yes, that’s the technical term) since you would be stretched from head to toe. It would feel as it sounds: excruciatingly painful. Time slows down indefinitely as the light rays are manipulated, until eventually, if someone were watching you, it would seem as if you just faded into blackness. As you reach the center of the hole, where density becomes infinite, your body would get squashed, becoming one with the black hole. 

So, how’s your stomach? Still craving that plate of spaghetti at dinner?