Summary Of Death By Black Hole By Neil Degrasse Tysons

In Neil Degrasse Tysons book, “Death by Black Hole”, he says states something quite intriguing. “Without a doubt, the most spectacular way to die in space is to fall into a black hole. Where else in the universe can you lose your life by being ripped apart atom by atom?”

Black holes are regions of space (and of space) where the gravity is so high that the fabric of space and time has basically curved in or collapsed on itself. The very first black hole found was Cygnus X-1 that is roughly 6000 light years from earth. Primordial black holes are thought to have formed in the early universe, soon after the big bang and Stellar black holes form when the center of a very massive star collapses in upon itself. This collapse also causes a supernova,

Oddly enough you wouldn’t feel this force at all because, like anything in free fall, you are weightless. The gravity at your feet accelerates them faster than your head since gravity is weaker there. This difference is called tidal force, which grows abruptly as you get closer to the black hole’s center. If one of us where to fall in a black hole our body would stay whole until the instant the tidal force exceeded your body’s molecular bonds. Our body would then snap in two breaking apart at our midsection. As we fall further, the difference in gravity keeps growing, and each of your two body segments snaps in two again. Then those 4 segments snap in two and so forth until you’ve been ripped into organic molecules which then are also snapped apart creating a stream of atoms. Even these atoms snap apart leaving behind particles that used to be you. This method of death has been given the very odd name of spaghettification. As far as we know, no one has ever been eaten by a black hole, but there is very compelling evidence to suggest that black holes in the universe routinely absorb stars and unsuspecting gas clouds. As the cloud approaches a black hole, it hardly ever falls straight in. A gas cloud typically gets drawn into orbit before it spirals into nothingness. The parts of the cloud that are closer to the black hole

For some galaxies, an odd high luminosity in a small volume provides the needed criteria, but the actual luminosity depends quite heavily on what stars and gases or if there is any available for the black hole to eat. With this its possible that there is a black hole at the center of a galaxy with very little light as the black hole has already eaten all the surrounding things, leaving behind no evidence. Stars near the center of the galaxy that are close to the orbit of the black hole, but not close enough for it to be consumed, will have a huge increase in speed. These speeds, when combined with the stars’ distance from the center give a good measure of the total mass contained within the orbits. Using this data, scientists can calculate if the central mass is, indeed, a black hole. The largest known black holes are usually around a billion star masses, such as what hides in the galaxy M87, the largest of the Virgo clusters. The black hole in the center of our galaxy is a mere 4-million solar