• Question: Is a giant black Hole going sucking us up in 1000years.

    Asked by 496sptm42 to Ollie, Christine on 2 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Alexander Burke

      Alexander Burke answered on 2 Mar 2018:


      Wow! right now we have very little to worry about and there is a VERY small chance of this ever happening. However, I’m not a liar, so there is a very small possibility this could happen. Let me explain why.

      Our universe is a very dynamical place. What I mean by this is that things move around and bump into each other. Sometimes even the most extreme astrophysical objects could crash into each other such as black holes and neutron stars. One thing that Christine and I are very experienced in are collisions of black holes of all shapes and sizes.

      There is a theory that when two black holes collide, there can be a large excess of linear momentum (kinda like a left over force…) left between the two black holes. So, the new black hole (which was formed by the two black holes eating each other) can be “kicked” off at lightning speeds and thrown away from where it was. So, in theory, there could be hundreds, thousands, millions and billions of black holes flying around the universe at great speeds eating up everything that they pass through.

      There is nothing to worry about though. The universe is such a massive place that this will probably never happen to us. Even if it did it would happen so quickly we wouldn’t know about it =).

      There is a greater chance of the earth being destroyed by the expansion of the sun. In roughly 1 billion to 7 billion years, the sun will grow in size so that it becomes “closer” to the earth. When it’s closer, it will essentially roast the planet like an oven. Again, nothing to worry about this is well outside both of our lifetimes!

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