What the Physics?!

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

If you jumped into a black hole, not even the strongest rope could keep you from plunging into the black hole's depths toward singularity. Your plunge would be as unstoppable as the march of time is to you and me. Even before you crossed the event horizon—the point of no return—the universe as you know it would become very strange. But at the event horizon, your fate becomes complicated and not fully understood. It depends on the perspective of who’s asking and which of the two pillars of physics—quantum mechanics or gravity—is ultimately correct.

Ever wonder what it would be like to fall into a black hole? Dive in for a 360° adventure.

Ever wonder what it would be like to fall into a black hole? Dive in for a 360° adventure.

360° Dive into a BLACK HOLE

Physics & Math

Narrator: At the center of nearly every galaxy, including the one you’re approaching, there is a supermassive black hole with a group of stars orbiting it. And you are now falling into that black hole—a black hole a million times more massive than the Sun.Starting several million miles away, all you see is a small black dot surrounded by a ring. This is the Einstein ring. Any light near the black hole gets warped due to the black hole’s massive bending of spacetime.Using the jetpack on your spacesuit, you stop three million miles from the black hole. You’ve reached the photon sphere. If you flash on a light, the moment later, after those photons have orbited the black hole, you’ll see a ring of light around you.You continue to slowly lower yourself into the black hole. A few hundred thousand miles out, you’ll see the outside universe get bluer. As light falls into the gravitational well of the black hole, its frequency, and therefore color, changes.Twenty thousand miles out, you see the stars orbiting ten times faster than before. The warped spacetime slows your clock relative to the outside world.Two hundred miles from the event horizon, stars look like they’re moving a hundred times faster. If you slowly lower yourself into the black hole, its darkness envelops you, squeezing the universe into a dot.The entire universe is filled with invisible microwave radiation, but in your last moments you can actually see it as a flash of visible light.To learn about what’s inside a black hole, what happens at its horizon, and much, much more, check out “What the Physics?!” on YouTube and check out NOVA’s two-hour special, “Black Hole Apocalypse.”

360° Dive into a BLACK HOLE

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