Science Memes

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perspective (mander.xyz)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 3 months ago (22 children)

Astrophysicist here. Yes, space is crazy, but interesting things to keep in mind:

The size of a star is determined by something called the photosphere. With those extremely massive stars, you can be hundreds of millions of kilometres "inside" and not yet know it.
Similar story with supermassive black holes, from the perspective of an astronaut falling in, they wouldn't really be able to tell when they cross the horizon because the tidal forces there are very small (they will inevitably fall towards the centre and get spaghettified at some point)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I was under the impression that the time it would take you to get spaghettified would render the fear of such an experience irrelevant, as you'd be long dead of natural causes before then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

In the case you are unlucky enough to encounter the black hole "heads on" and fall into it radially, the proper time timescale to spaghettification is the size of the event horizon divided by the speed of light. The most supermassive black holes will have a horizon of around one light day, so that's what we're working with, a matter of days. If you come in on the most tangential orbit possible though, I guess you're buying some time but I've never heard that it's supposed to take many years of proper time (I doubt that claim a little bit, but haven't calculated myself).

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