Black holes are mysterious bodies that defy the laws of physics as we know it. We can barely grasp the concept of one. We don’t know for certain what exactly black holes exactly are of what they do. It’s impossible to know.
However, what we can do is observe black holes and then theorize on what they’re capable of. Henceforth comes the inevitable question: What would happen if someone jumped into a black hole? Well, here are 10 of the most eerie theories on what would happen if you entered a black hole.
10Cloning
The black hole information paradox is an enigma that has eluded physicists for centuries now. It has been the trigger for endless debates on what actually happens once you enter a black hole. To fully understand the paradox, we’re going to need the help of your friend, Lucy. Lucy decided to back out at the last second and is currently watching you from afar as you enter a black hole alone. As you proceed closer, she sees you slowly get stretched until you eventually evaporate into a crisp. Lucy now thinks you’re dead and is glad that she didn’t listen to you.
But, wait . . . that’s not how the story ends. You’re actually still alive and well, and you’re venturing endlessly through the black hole. What actually happens to you next doesn’t concern us at this point. What is really intriguing, though, is the fact that you’re still alive, even though Lucy just saw you die.
This is the black hole information paradox. It isn’t an illusion, and neither you nor Lucy have lost your minds. It just simply is. The laws of physics dictate that you’re both dead outside the black hole and alive within it. Some physicists have theorized that there isn’t a paradox at all, as both realities cannot be observed at the same time. Others have nominated cloning (that two realities of you exist) as the solution to this paradox, even though it defies quantum mechanics laws pertaining to conservation of information.
In the end, there is no certain answer to this paradox (yet). Perhaps thousands of years from now, we’ll understand what really goes on. However, we do know for certain that you shouldn’t take Lucy with you on trips anymore.
9Spaghettification
It’s theorized that once you enter the event horizon of a black hole, you would start to experience tidal forces from the massive gravity. As you’re falling through the black hole, the force applied to you, compared to the cohesiveness of your body, would cause you to be ripped into pieces.
Moreover, if you decided to boldly jump in head first into a black hole, your head would be pulled so far apart from your feet, that you would start to look like spaghetti. The idea is that the difference in acceleration due to gravity between your head and feet is so tremendous at that point that you would be stretched and shaped that resembles spaghetti. Thus, physicists have coined the process as spaghettification.
8Distortion Of Light, Space, And Time
The first thing anyone would notice upon entering the event horizon of a black hole is how different light, space, and time are. Once you get inside, the laws of physics as we know it cease to exists, and new laws are put into place.
The infinite amount of gravity that is produced from the singularity at the center of the black hole is capable of warping space, altering time, and disfiguring light. Because of this, your perception of what is going on would be tremendously compared to how you viewed things before you transitioned through the event horizon. Of course, this will only last until you’re engulfed in the lonesome darkness and are no longer able to perceive anything.
7Time Travel
The greatest physicists to ever grace this humble planet of ours, like Einstein and Hawking, have theorized that time traveling into the future is possible by abusing the ethereal laws of a black hole. As previously mentioned, the laws of physics are null inside a black hole, and a new set of laws are put into place. One thing that is excruciatingly different in a black hole compared to our world is time. Gravity warps time, and a black hole is essentially a massive gravitational body.
With that in mind, the idea is that the time distortion allows for the possibility of time travel. By abusing the tremendous disparity of time between inside and outside the event horizon, you could actually come back to a futuristic world where you’re still 25, but your best friend is now 60, due to gravitational time dilatation.
Of course, we have to take into consideration that, at the moment, we have no way of traveling to a black hole, let alone a way of entering one and coming out unscathed.
6You Live Normally
If we had the option of picking a black hole to enter, we should probably pick out a supermassive or a Kerr black hole.
If we managed to travel to the black hole at the center our galaxy, which is 25,000 light years away and 4.3 million times more massive than our Sun, we could possibly live out our lives normally inside of it. The concept behind this is that the tidal force applied to anyone entering is insignificant, as the event horizon is much further away the black hole’s center. Thus, you would continue living like usual inside the event horizon until you die of hunger or dehydration or finally hit the singularity. Take your bets on what would happen first, because no one knows.
Moreover, it is also theoretically possible to live your life in a black hole if it happens to be a Kerr black hole, which is a unique type of black hole that was theorized in 1963 by Roy Kerr. He believed that if dying stars were to collapse inside “a rotating ring of neutron stars,” then it would be possible to enter a black hole unharmed, as the centrifugal force produced would prevent the formation of a singularity. The lack of a singularity in a black hole would mean that you wouldn’t have to fear infinite gravitational forces, and thus, you could live out your life normally.
5Live Einstein’s Happiest Thought
Einstein imagined that by entering a certain freely falling motion, you would be able to cancel out the force of gravity. This would mean that a person would stop feeling his own weight while freely falling, and anything else that was dropped at the same time wouldn’t seem as if it was dropping at all, but rather hovering.
Einstein coined this idea, from which he based his world-renowned theory of general relativity, as his happiest thought ever. And it could be your happiest thought too, if you jumped into a black hole. Even though you are freely falling into God knows what, you wouldn’t be able to notice that you’re falling until you hit the black hole’s singularity. However, if someone were able to view you, they would obviously see you falling. This is due to the fact that whatever surrounds you is dropping relative to you, while it isn’t for whoever is observing from the outside.
4White Hole
It’s well-known that a black hole absorbs everything that enters its event horizon, to the extent that even light cannot escape it. Less well-known is where those doomed particles end up. One theory is that whatever ends up inside of a black hole comes out at its other end, which is a white hole.
Of course, no one has ever seen a white hole before, so no one actually knows if it’s actually white or not. But the reason behind why it is named so is because a white hole represents the complete opposite of what a black hole is. Instead of absorbing everything that enters it, it spits out everything that is inside of it. And just like how you cannot escape a black hole, the opposite is true in a white hole, as you wouldn’t be able to enter one.
The white hole, in short, spits out whatever the black hole has swallowed into an alternate universe. This theory has made physicists consider white holes as the basis of the creation of our universe as we know it. If you manage to survive falling into a black hole and somehow travel out of its white hole, you are most likely never going to be able to access this universe ever again.
3Watch The History Of The Universe Play Itself Out
As we’ve mentioned previously, it’s possible to encounter a black hole with no singularity. Such a black hole would have a wormhole in its place instead. If we manage to actually travel through the wormhole, we would witness the history of the universe play itself out in front of our eyes in the process of transiting to whatever is at the end of the wormhole. It would be as if someone played a video tape of the universe’s history on infinite fast-forward.
However, this story has a bad ending, as the faster the speed of the picture gets, the closer you are to dying. The light will become more and more blueshifted and energetic until it instantly fries you alive with radiation.
2Travel To A Parallel Universe
If you somehow manage to get yourself stuck in a black hole, whether by choice or not, just look around you; there might be a way out. Even though it would be impossible to return to the universe you once loved and cherished, you would still be safe (or at least safer) in a new, parallel universe.
Physicists have theorized that once you reach a black hole’s singularity, it could act as a bridge to an alternate reality, or a so-called “parallel universe.” What this new universe possess is really up to the imagination. Some theories even say that an infinite amount of alternate different yous lie in an equally infinite amount of alternate universes.
So, have you ever wondered what could have been—what could have happened if you went after that dream of yours instead of settling, what could have been if you were richer or poorer, or if you chased after that cute girl/guy? Well, you might actually find out (if you jump into a black hole).
1You Become Part Of The Universe
Hawking theorized that certain particles that enter a black hole are filtered out into positive and negative particles. These particles are slowly absorbed by the black hole. As the negative particles fall in they decrease its mass. Positive particles have just enough energy to remain outside of the black hole as radiation.
As the black hole slowly but surely starts to lose mass and gets hotter and hotter, it explodes its contents, referred to as Hawking radiation, back to the universe. This, in concept, means that you might become a part of the universe, like a phoenix rising from atomic ashes.
+You’ll Just . . . Die
Sometimes, we like to ignore obvious and grim reality while being blinded by the opportunity to yearn for something greater.
As sadistic as it sounds, the most likely outcome of falling into a black hole is that before you could even acknowledge your presence within it, you’d be torn to smithereens. You wouldn’t even understand that you were witnessing what physicists claim as the key to understanding the universe’s eerie mysteries.
Twitter: @AMAbdelDayem
By: Ahmad Alomda
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