What If A Black Hole Entered Our Solar System
Don't get me wrong, it's not every day that I ask myself such global questions! But that day work was slow, I was scrolling through some science video, and suddenly. . . wham-bam! An idea came to my mind! Come on, don't laugh, it's not that unusual for me! So, what I thought was, 'What if a huge black hole entered our Solar system? What would happen then?' I'm a man of action. That's why I immediately started to search the Internet to find the answer to this, let me be honest, a bit worrying question. And oh boy, what I have discovered! Our Solar System is eight planets, hundreds of natural satellites aka moons, thousands of asteroids, and billions of comets; and all this space cocktail is in perpetual motion, orbiting the Sun. And it turns out that all this complex system can be torn apart if just one stray black hole decides to drop by. So far, no black hole has disturbed the peace of our planet. And even though the closest to our Solar System black hole is 10 to 13 times the mass of the Sun, it's also located 3,000 light years away from us. So, we have some time to prepare if once it decides to pay us a visit. But let's imagine that some other black hole chooses to take a shortcut through our Solar System. First of all, if you, just like me before I did my research, were sure that a black hole is actually a real hole, let me disappoint you. Black holes are huge amounts of matter crammed into a tiny (well, compared to the size of the Universe) space.
As a result, they have extremely strong - and I mean it! - gravitational pull. In fact, it's so powerful that even light can't escape once a black hole gets its hands on it. Also, before, I thought that black holes were created equal, but it turned out I was wrong. There are mega monsters called supermassive black holes, and they are the ones which churn slowly at the centers of galaxies. They gather tremendous clouds of gas and dust around them, which makes them swell up to the sizes the human mind can't begin to imagine. Chances that you will ever see such a giant up close are infinitesimal, maybe only if our galaxy crashes into another in several billion years from now. But if a supermassive black hole, like the one that dwells at the center of our home Milky Way galaxy, moves even a bit closer to our Solar System, we're doomed. The distance between this huge thing and Earth can be several dozens of light years, and still, it will wreak havoc on our planet. You see, with all those planets, stars, and comets circling around, supermassive black holes are quite unpredictable and extremely dangerous.
As soon as such a hole entered our Solar System, all the stuff that it was dragging along would start to hit Earth and other planets of the Solar System. Chances are high that all the fun we've been having on our planet would be over all too soon, finished off by a huge asteroid or another, stray planet crashing into Earth. As for our home planet itself, as well as other things that used to make up our Solar System, they would be tugged into the black hole's orbit and doomed to spin around it for eternity or longer. But hey, that's not all! There are also stellar black holes, smaller, but even more deadly! They appear when stars that have run out of their star fuel fall into themselves. If a star used to be big enough, it keeps compressing and compressing some more. . . and voila! A baby stellar black hole gets born! Even if I've called such a hole a small one, it's still 20 or so times heavier than the Sun. So, let's say, you don't know it yet, but a stellar black hole is nearing the outskirts of our Solar System right now! First of all, at a distance which is 100,000 times bigger than the one between the Sun and Earth, the black hole triggers a pretty bad gravitational chaos in the area called the Oort Cloud. As a result, ice-cold comets from this area get sent toward Earth and other planets of our Solar System. But you don't know about it yet and keep living your life untroubled. The most terrifying thing about all this situation though is that you don't notice the black hole until it's too late! (Not that you have anywhere to escape from this disaster. . . )
The only detail that can give away the approaching black hole is a slight blurring of distant stars due to the hole's gravitational lensing effect. But then the hole begins to tear layers from the giant gas planets of our Solar System, such as Neptune, Jupiter, or Saturn. It creates such a huge super-hot cloud of dust and gas around the black hole that people on Earth can't but notice it. It seems unfair that something that small (and the tiniest black holes can reach only 15 miles in diameter!) can consume things thousand times bigger. That's why as it moves, the black hole is tearing the planets apart. You see how they disappear, planet by planet, as the hole is approaching Earth. As soon as the black hole reaches the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, we start to feel its pull. Supervolcanoes go off, devastating earthquakes shake the ground, everything is crumbling and disappearing in dust and debris. By the time the black holes reaches Earth, there are no living beings left on the currently magma-laden uninhabitable piece of rock. Also, despite what I used to believe, black holes don't 'suck' stuff. The trick is that suction can only be caused when something is getting pulled into the vacuum, and a black hole is anything but that. This is why our planet won't be 'sucked' into a black hole, no, it will simply fall there! But before disappearing in the black hole, our planet will go through spaghettification!
To tell you the truth, I laughed out loud for the first time I saw this word! But when I got the meaning of this term. . . honestly, I was terrified. In simple words, if you get too close to a black hole, you're going to be stretched out, just like spaghetti, due to the hole's incredible gravitation pull. And any object nearing a black hole will turn into such a spaghetti long before it reaches the center of the hole. So, that's what would most likely happen to Earth if it got too close to the stellar black hole. But as I said, by that time, you won't care about it anymore. On the other hand, according to scientific estimations, the odds of a black hole coming across our Solar System, not to say munching on our planet, are lower than the chances of winning a lottery ten times in a row. In numbers, there's a one-in-a-trillion opportunity that Earth will ever get swallowed by a black hole, which can't but give me some hope! Anyway, once I started to read about black holes, I just couldn't stop: these mysterious guys are just too mesmerizing, right? That's when I thought, 'Ok, but what would happen if two supermassive black holes collide? Would they create a megasupermassive black hole?' And guess what? Science (along with the Internet, of course) had the answer to this question. It turns out that almost all galaxies in the Universe have their own supermassive black holes.
In some galaxies, there can be black holes which are billions of times more massive than our Sun! And now, can you imagine what happens when two galaxies decide to merge? Their black holes have to somehow agree to cohabit together and interact like civilized. . . well. . . holes. No. Just kidding. When two supermassive black holes come into contact, either by spiraling inward and eventually touching or by a direct collision, it's not a peaceful merge. The forces are so great that one of the black holes gets kicked away at an incredible speed! The most powerful kick can happen if, before the unfortunate encounter, the two black holes have been rotating in opposite directions. It's like two disks, which are spinning incredibly fast, coming together! No wonder that just in a fraction of a second, the weaker of the two black holes gets a mighty kick which sends it out of the newly formed galaxy. It never returns.
