BLACK holes have mystified scientists for decades with their space and time bending secrets.
And interest in them has rocketed once again following the July 18, 2022, discovery of the first black hole outside the Milky Way. But will a black hole hit Earth and what would happen if it did?
New photos from the European Southern Observatory shows a black hole outside the Milky Way[/caption]
Will a black hole hit Earth?
It is incredibly unlikely a black hole will hit Earth.
This is mainly because of the sheer distance they are from us, with the Milky Way’s black hole 26,000 light years away, so there’s no danger of being pulled in.
To put that into perspective, a spaceship travels at around five miles per second.
If the speed of light travels at 186,282 miles per second, it would take a whopping 37,200 human years just to travel one light year.
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That means it would take a spaceship 967,200,000 human years to get to the Milky Way.
With the universe expanding, the chances of a black hole colliding with Earth are even slimmer, the Independent reports.
What happens if a black hole hits Earth?
No particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light can escape from a black hole and time comes to a stop at its edge.
And if an object enters a black hole, it will get crushed to a microscopic size and never return.
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All laws of physics are crushed in the innards of a black hole.
If a human was sucked into this, they would likely be stretched like spaghetti before being incinerated.
But the gravitational pull at the edge of a black hole would unlikely be able to swallow Earth, according to astronomy magazine Sky at Night.
Can we know if danger is coming?
Black holes are extremely dangerous given they can rip stars apart and stop time.
According to Big Think, there are three ways to detect the presence of a black hole in the neighbourhood.
The first sign is strong gravitational lensing, where objects around the black hole will have their light stretched and distorted.
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The second is weak gravitational lensing, where objects that are further away will have their shapes distorted.
And the third is microlensing where the black hole will amplify the light of a star and trigger a massive temporary brightening.
