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How exactly does it feel when a black hole kills you?

Posted in space

By Katie Peek — Popular ScienceAs you fall feet first across an event horizon—the point where nothing can escape the black hole’s gravitational pull—you don’t feel anything change. But eventually, gravity is so much stronger at your feet than your head that you’re stretched apart, like Play-Doh, until you snap. Or at least, that’s the picture physicists drew after Einstein proposed his theory of general relativity in 1915. In the past few years, new possibilities for your untimely end have emerged.

The thought experiments attempt to resolve a paradox that physicist Stephen Hawking outlined in the 1970s. He showed that in their current forms, the two major pillars of physics—quantum mechanics and general relativity—can’t both be true near a black hole. General relativity governs how very massive objects work, while quantum mechanics governs how very tiny objects work. In most of the universe, physicists can choose which set of rules to apply—general relativity for a galaxy cluster, quantum mech­anics for a particle accelerator—but a black hole is both very massive and very small. Read more

1 Comment so far

  1. Why did Black Holes and Star’s have gravity?

    Where is the matter get a chance to get together. The gravity in there increases. One star’s energy will maintaining and increasing by the gravity. That means for preparation of energy a pressure is needed. If the size of the star increases the power to produce energy also increases. That is why we can’t see the stars in the size of planets and also like that in black holes it need a decided quantity of gravity. kishorens.com

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