Spaghetti and the singularity

Into the black hole

A spaceship approaches a small black hole. The end closer to the black hole is pulled much harder than the far end, so the ship stretches out like a noodle. To someone watching from far away, the ship turns redder and slower and seems to freeze just above the horizon. The very center inside the horizon is called the singularity, and today’s theories cannot tell us what happens there.

Why?The smaller the black hole, the stronger the stretching. For a person 2 m tall reaching the horizon, the difference in pull between head and feet is about 20 million times Earth’s gravity for a black hole of 10 Suns. For a black hole of about 4 million Suns, like the one at the center of our galaxy, it is only about 1/9,000 of Earth’s gravity, so you would hardly feel it.

Learn moreThis stretching is called spaghettification. At the singularity, the calculations of general relativity blow up to infinity and stop giving answers. That is why scientists are looking for a new theory that unites gravity with the laws of the very small.

Clock we are watching

The falling ship’s clock (seen from far away)

How much slower

Appears to stop

Clock rate

0

seconds this clock ticks while a clock far away in empty space ticks one second · calculated with the formulas of relativity