TheAgitator.com
How I Wanna Go
Thursday, September 11th, 2008Slate explains what happens if you get sucked into a black hole:
….you would be sent into free fall toward its center. The pulling force would increase as you moved toward the center, creating what’s called a “tidal force” on your body. That is to say, the gravity acting on your head would be much stronger than the gravity acting on your toes (assuming you were falling head-first). That would make your head accelerate faster than your toes; the difference would stretch your body until it snapped apart, first at its weakest point and then disintegrating rapidly from there as the tidal force became stronger than the chemical bonds holding your body together. You’d be reduced to a bunch of disconnected atoms. Those atoms would be stretched into a line and continue in a processional march. As Tyson described it, you would be “extruded through space like toothpaste being squeezed through a tube.” No one knows for certain what happens to those atoms once they reach the center, or “singularity,” of a black hole.
Comments now open for clever suggestions about what happens at the singularity. A Rob Base and D.J. E-Z Rock reunion? Is it where Bill Belichick stores his unused soul? The site of the last remaining Orange Julius?
if they made a ride like this at Six Flags, I would so go.
You end up on Monica Lewinsky’s dress.
You travel through the Great Barrier and meet an entity that claims to be God, but because you are Kirk, you don’t believe him.
There’s a bunch of Orange Juli around me still, mostly collocated with Dairy Queens.
You’ll see Osama bin Laden sitting there…flipping you the bird.
You can’t breath in space, duh.
Same here in Chicago, Stormy. Oh, and not to nitpick, but wouldn’t it be Julii?
You find the dimension where all the single socks, lost keys and loose change go.
It’s where the mob put Jimmy Hoffa
I always liked Stephen Hawking’s observation that goes something like this: you would be able to see the future and the past simultaneously, but you wouldn’t have enough time to appreciate it.
You find where Axl Rose has been hiding “Chinese Democracy” all these years.
You’ll find the place where a 3rd party candidate is elected President.
You never actually reach the singularity, but during the time you’re falling from the Schwartzchild radius towards it you are subjected to an infinite number of Rickrolls.
You would become a planet unto your own.
You get to see all the rights you no longer have…
They left out the coolest part, methinks: the time dilation effects of approaching and crossing the event horizon (via Wikipedia).
Before the falling object crosses the event horizon
An object in a gravitational field experiences a slowing down of time, called gravitational time dilation, relative to observers outside the field. The outside observer will see that physical processes in the object, including clocks, appear to run slowly. As a test object approaches the event horizon, its gravitational time dilation (as measured by an observer far from the hole) would approach infinity. Its time would appear to be stopped.
From the viewpoint of a distant observer, an object falling into a black hole appears to slow down, approaching but never quite reaching the event horizon: and it appears to become redder and dimmer, because of the extreme gravitational red shift caused by the gravity of the black hole. Eventually, the falling object becomes so dim that it can no longer be seen, at a point just before it reaches the event horizon. All of this is a consequence of time dilation: the object’s movement is one of the processes that appear to run slower and slower, and the time dilation effect is more significant than the acceleration due to gravity; the frequency of light from the object appears to decrease, making it look redder, because the light appears to complete fewer cycles per “tick” of the observer’s clock; lower-frequency light has less energy and therefore appears dimmer, as well as redder.
From the viewpoint of the falling object, distant objects generally appear blue-shifted due to the gravitational field of the black hole. This effect may be partly (or even entirely) negated by the red shift caused by the velocity of the infalling object with respect to the object in the distance.
As the object passes through the event horizon
From the viewpoint of the falling object, nothing particularly special happens at the event horizon. In fact, there is no (local) way for him to find out whether he has passed the horizon or not. An infalling object takes a finite proper time (i.e. measured by its own clock) to fall past the event horizon. This in contrast with the infinite amount of time it takes for a distant observer to see the infalling object cross the horizon.
You become the Loc-Nar.
Probably end up where the Colts will-
Option 1: On one side there’s a Starbuck’s, but it’s closing. You don’t really mind though because you always go to the Starbuck’s on the other side of the singularity because it has a cute barista.
Option 2: A sports bar with 50 72″ flat screen LCDs showing nothing but Hannity and Colmes all day, every day. The only beer they serve is PBR and Milwaukee’s Best, but either costs 6 bucks. That’s right, hell.
I bet there’s a Starbucks.
Unless V.I.N.CENT. saves you, you will see the combined entity of Dr. Hans Reinhardt and Maximilian standing on a rock.
Lousy type-13 disaster planet.
Just have to say, I heart Mike.
I’ve got the read along book and record at home :)
can i link it?
I thought it was the palace of Xenu.
You end up graduating from San Dimas High School just like Bill & Ted in their Excellent Adventure.
You end up taking over the body of John Malkovich … at least for a while.
You wake up and get out of the U.S. Army’s suspended animation container in 2505. Just like Upgrayedd.
“Unless V.I.N.CENT. saves you, you will see the combined entity of Dr. Hans Reinhardt and Maximilian standing on a rock.”
Nice, is that V.I.N.CENT with or without the tooth necklace?
Can we send the presidential candidates through to see what happens?
The center of a black hole is composed of an infinitely dense mass of discontinued Zimbabwean fiat currency notes.
#28 – Tim – man, that is so weird – that SL 2021 epi was on last night . . . the day after you wrote that :D