Question: what happens if you get sucked into a black whole?

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  1. Hi Lachy,
    If you went in feet first, you would be spaghettified as Neil Degrasse Tyson calls it.
    As you get closer to the black hole, because your feet are closer than your head they will be pulled on more than your head. So you would begin to stretch out into a long version of you.
    But also some other strange things would happen. Because you are approaching increased gravity, time for you would slow down, so looking back out of the black hole the universe would appear to speed up.
    If you were watching someone fall into a black hole, they would appear to fall in but sort of get stuck and freeze, and slowly disappear.

    Video on Death by black hole

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  2. There are the well-known descriptions of spaghettification, in which you are close enough to the black hole that the forces on the different parts of your body are different and you get stretched to an uncomfortable degree (e.g. into little pieces). This is an extreme example of tidal forces. A gentler example is the effect of the Sun and Moon on our oceans, which are pulled in those directions and stretched, giving us high tides and low tides at the beach. However, it is no party getting close enough to a black hole to experience spaghettification. Most black holes are madly gobbling up material which, as it spirals into the black hole, gets extremely hot and produces masses of uv radiation, X-ray radiation and gamma-ray radiation. So, if you get to the point of spaghettification, chances are you already have a real bad sunburn.

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  3. Hi Lachy,
    I don’t know much about black holes, but I think that the different forces on the different parts of your body would probably cause you to stretch out in some strange way, and you would probably be exposed to a lot of heat and radiation. Black holes are also constantly sucking up things, and even light can’t escape them (which is why they are black!) so you wouldn’t be able to get back out again! So you would be deformed, burnt and stuck! 🙁 You can read more about black holes at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole if you are interested.

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  4. Spagehttification just about covers it. Steven and Dustin have you sorted.

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