🤔 Black hole myth busted: they don't suck anything in
Many of us look at black holes as cosmic vacuum cleaners: sucking in everything in their vicinity. But it turns out they don't suck at all.
Ok.. so...
Does not 'suck' you in with the power of a vacuum...
About right?
You fall into gravity wells, they don't suck you.
Best way to understand is to get the mental image of spacetime as a 3d sheet like grid, where each object pushes down on it and creates a pit, or well. The bigger the object the deeper the well, and the more force you will need to stop yourself from sliding towards the object and propelling yourself back up the slope.
Eh thats kinda nitpicky. For non physics people "sucking in with lots of force" is good enough to describe "absurdly strong gravitational pull". Its not a myth, its an over simplification.
I think the point the article was trying to make is that "sucking in with lots of force" does not really happen any differently outside the event horizon of a black hole than it would in the proximity of any other star (or object) with the same mass.
So it's addressing the "myth" that being in the proximity of a black hole would inevitably suck you in.. however, odds are that if you are not directly aiming for the black hole, even if you did not resist, you would just end up entering an orbit around it, the same way we are currently orbiting the Sun. Or maybe even be catapulted out of it, instead of sucked in.
The difference would be that past the event horizon you would be torn apart by the space distortion (instead of being cooked alive if it were a star). But theoretically if you can avoid crashing into a star, then you can avoid entering a black hole.
It's exactly the same gravitational pull as the star that previously collapsed... (And I've not read the article (yet), this is just a personal nitpick that I've had for a LONG time).
--edit after reading the article--
In terms of inevitably falling into a black hole, it’s only the material that formed interior to three times the event horizon radius — interior to what’s known as the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) in general relativity — that would inexorably get sucked into it. Compared to what actually falls into the event horizon in our physical reality, the purported “sucking” effects are nowhere to be found. In the end, we have only the force of gravity, and the curved spacetime that would result from the presence of these masses, affecting the evolution of objects located in space at all. The idea that black holes suck anything in is arguably the biggest myth about black holes of all. They grow due to gravitation, and nothing more. In this Universe, that’s more than enough to account for all the phenomena we observe.
That summary explains it better than I can.
I disagree. It is more than just a nitpick. Saying black holes suck things in implies that they are doing something different than any other mass. Which they are not. Would you say a star sucks in stuff around it? Or a planet? Or moon? No. That sounds absurd. It makes it sound like blackholes are doing something different to everything else - which is miss-leading at best. They way things are described matter as it paints a very different picture to the layman.
Pedantry, thy name is this article.
:nerd:
Anyone else get the impression it's a slow news day?
Well there goes my dream of getting sucked off by a black hole!
and don't dismiss the bragging rights for being that guy with the longest penis ever
Universe's longest needle dick.
Sounds like you can still get pulled by a black hole though!
Pulling, when done well, can be as nice and effective as sucking, and I'm sure black holes have a lot of experience in pulling things.
Pretty sure anyone living in these solar systems. Considers their star to suck.
I imagine all the parties are pretty lame.
"This is the only context in which black holes even appear to suck matter in: as they absorb matter that undergoes gravitational infall due to the black hole’s mass"
I may not be the smartest of person but this article seems to contradict itself a little