100 Ways to Die in Space – # 17 Black Hole

Welcome to 100 Ways to Die in Space

Hi there bloggies, welcome to a new and fun little feature – 100 ways to die in space. Taking inspiration from a million ways to die in the west I’ll be taking a somewhat tongue in cheek at the many and various ways that space is somewhat unkind to the average human being and it pretty effective at killing them very quickly. Step aboard and see what happens, just don’t come on wearing a red top!

Method 17 – Black Hole

This is quite an extreme method of finding your mortality in space and in a funny kind of way it might not ever happen, it depends on your point of view.

What I mean by this is that the close you get to a black hole time slows down, so if you fell part the event horizon things would stop. Our poor astronaut however seems things a bit differently…

The extreme gravitational distortion at a black hole would mean that the close part of one’s body were to the black hole the more they would be stretched when compared with the bit further away, this has the rather unfortunate effect of stretching that body out making some kind of human spaghetti. Once you get into this kind of pickle there’s isn’t much of a way out of it within the laws of physics.

It’s fair to say that as far as we’re aware of there are no black holes in our local vicinity so even at the speed of light it’s going to take a while to get there. The main thing really is to keep your distance and not get sucked in.

© Simon Farnell 2013 – 2022

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