NASA’s new graphic visualizes what would happen if someone fell into a supermassive black hole like the one at the center of the Milky Way. Researchers used the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Climate Simulation Center to create the simulation. The video shows the observation angle while falling straight through a glowing gas accretion disk surrounding a supermassive black hole, ultimately reaching the event horizon where even light cannot escape. Live Science reported on May 7th.
Black holes are the densest objects in the universe and have strong gravitational fields that distort space-time. Around a black hole, gravity is so powerful that objects are close to the speed of light, causing time to appear to slow down. Supermassive black holes, like the one at the center of the Milky Way, are larger and less turbulent compared to stellar-mass black holes, resulting in a calmer experience when falling into them.
The simulation created by astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explores what would happen if someone got too close to the supermassive black hole. While you may still experience the spaghetti effect due to gravitational forces stretching your body, falling through the event horizon of a supermassive black hole would be the first point of no return.
The observer in the simulation is destroyed by the peak gravitational force just 12.8 seconds after passing through the event horizon and will reach the singularity, the center of the black hole, a few microseconds later. The journey from the event horizon to the singularity, a distance of 128,000 km, happens almost instantaneously. The visualization provides an immersive look at the experience of falling into a supermassive black hole and the effects of the strong gravitational forces at play.