- - - This is a comic strip - - - A wide shot shows a black hole in space. A spaceship labeled SPACE-Z-TRAVELS floats nearby. Several space tourists in spacesuits are doing a spacewalk, trying to take photos of themselves with the black hole in the background. In the foreground, Giselle says to her boyfriend, Jason: “Oh my god, babe! This is so freaky! Take some pictures!” Giselle poses in front of the black hole while Jason gets ready to take some cool photos. Jason says: “Float a few feet back, babe. A little further.”  At the exact moment Jason snaps the first picture, the black hole starts pulling Giselle in. Her body stretches as she begins to be “spaghettified.” She screams: “Aaaaah!!! Jason!!!” Giselle has disappeared beyond the event horizon. Jason shouts: “Giselle!!! Nooooooo!!!”  Jason begins to cry as he tries to process what just happened. He says: “Oh no. She’s gone. Forever.”  He adds: “And for what? One shitty picture?” A moment later, the black hole starts to tear open with a loud ripping sound. Bright light breaks through the opening.  In front of the blinding light inside the torn hole, the silhouette of Giselle appears. She is furious and yells: “Delete that picture!!!! Now!!!!”
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[–] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Gravity wells don’t have breakpoints like that though. They extend out to infinity, decreasing with the reciprocal square of the distance (Inverse-square law).

What you may be thinking of is the event horizon, but the way that works isn’t nearly as magical as people might think. As your orbit spirals in closer to the black hole (which takes an extremely long time from a stable orbit) your escape velocity gradually and smoothly increases. The event horizon is the point at which your escape velocity reaches the speed of light. What this means in practice is that you disappear from view, as the light reflecting off you can no longer escape.

The really weird part though is the gravitational time dilation effects near a black hole. To an outside observer, your approach to the event horizon (during spiral in) slows down more and more. That observer never sees you cross the event horizon because time dilation extends your descent time out to infinity. So you’ll end up appearing frozen in time, never reaching the event horizon.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Hell yeah, this is the best explanation of black hole + orbital mechanics and time properties I've seen published on the Internet

    Thank you for internalizing and actually understanding the phenomenon

    +1 Lemmy Coin 🪙

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Haha yes, well explained. I'm familiar with this info (actually just finished reading Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, by Kip Thorn which I highly recommend if you're into this).

    I meant event horizon, in this instance, but yes this comic isn't meant to be accurate anyway (last pane). But to your original point - wouldn't the black hole be a vacuum cleaner for all things within its event horizon?

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