“If you have a choice, you want to fall into a supermassive black hole,” explained Schnittman. “Stellar-mass black holes, containing up to about 30 solar masses, possess much smaller event horizons and stronger forces that can shatter approaching objects before they reach the horizon.”
This happens because the gravitational pull at the end of an object closer to the black hole is much stronger than that at the other end.
The event horizon of the simulated black hole spans about 25 million kilometers, or about 17% of the distance from Earth to the Sun. A flat, swirling cloud of hot, glowing gas called the accretion disk surrounds it and serves as a visual reference. So do bright structures called photon rings that form closer to the black hole.
As the camera approaches the black hole, reaching speeds closer and closer to that of light itself, the glow of the accretion disk and background stars becomes amplified in the same way that the sound of an oncoming race car is louder. strong.
Along the way, the black hole’s disk, photon rings, and night sky become increasingly distorted—and even form multiple images as their light traverses increasingly warped spacetime.
At the event horizon, even space-time itself flows inward at the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit. Once inside it, both the camera and the space-time in which it moves rush toward the center of the black hole—a one-dimensional point called the singularity, where the laws of physics as we know them cease to apply.
“Once the camera crosses the horizon, its destruction is only 12.8 seconds away,” Schnittman said. From there, it’s only 128,000 kilometers to the singularity. This final leg of the journey was over in an instant.
Versions played as 360-degree videos allow viewers to look around during the “ride.”
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In the alternative scenario, the camera orbits close to the event horizon but does not pass and escapes safely.
Tags: fall black hole Simulation performed NASA supercomputer
