What Would Happen To Your Body If You Fell Into A Black Hole?
Getting sucked into a black hole isn't on anyone's bucket list, probably because it's guaranteed that you would be killed -– or worse, expelled into an alternate dimension. In the event this fate is on your horizon, however, here's what you might expect.
The BBC says it starts with your body stretching and contorting, at least this is how it would appear to someone watching from a safe distance. This person would look up from Instagram to see your increasingly taffy-like body appearing to move slower and slower as you approach the event horizon, and any light around you would undergo "gravitational redshift," described in Nature as the result of gravity's pull on light, stretching it to lower, redder frequencies.
Falling into a black hole might be lovely
When you reach the event horizon, the point where light and anything slower than it can no longer escape, you would appear to the onlooker to have frozen, and your body would disintegrate from the "stretching of space, the stopping of time and the fires of Hawking radiation," says the BBC, reducing you to ash. However, from your perspective, you'd still be in the game. You'd be in free fall and wouldn't notice anything different, in theory at least. This notion of pleasant free fall was what Einstein considered his "happiest thought," according to this article from Stanford University.
Your fate is now determined by the size of the black hole. A small black hole will have a much stronger gravitational pull on the part of your body closest to the horizon, turning you into spaghetti, according to the BBC. A larger black hole would see a more gradual transition in gravitational pull, and your transition to spaghetti would be far less violent, if at all.
Falling into a black hole won't break the laws of physics
The problem of having seemingly been turned to ash, yet still existing, is known as the "black hole information paradox", according to Space.com, and gave scientists a ton of trouble until they realized that reality is subjective, and that nobody would be able to see both "yous" at once. So, as weird as it seems, no laws of physics are broken.
Black holes present theoretical quandaries that hold keys to understanding how our universe works. The jury's still out on what exactly would happen, but the short answer is: nothing good.