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June 2015 - The Sun's Evil Twin
Report #4 - May 2015
A Dense Intruder
Black holes are one of the universe's most dangerous celestial bodies known. These light-suckers are too far out to be of any threat to us, but what if they were? What if a black hole was stationed right here in our solar system? What would happen to Earth and the other planets? Today, SC Messier researches the effects of a black hole hitting our solar system.
An artist's interpretation of a black hole.
Accretion Disk
If the Black Hole Came for a "Friendly Visit"
If a black hole were to pass near the solar system, perhaps a light-year or so away, its great gravitational pull would rip the outer planets directly out of their orbits, hurling them left and right at remarkable speeds. Serious collions in which Jupiter, for example, would collide with a planet of near equal size, like Saturn, would take place, creating huge explosions of gaseous material on impact. Moons from these planets and comets would also be pulled from their orbits and thrown into the mix of running planets. Few alterations in the inner planets' and sun's orbits would change. However, what if the black hole traveled directly through our solar system?
If the black hole were to travel through our solar system, it would first tear through the Oort Cloud, sending comets flying left and right and shooting towards Earth and the other planets. If we looked up at the sky, we would see tens of hundreds of coments raining down in a huge shower of large rocks coated in fire and lava! At least we wouldn't be able to see the mutinous black hole while we're running away from all that, save a small "gravitational lensing effect" thanks to distant stars. That is, until the black hole were to strip the outer gas giant planets of its gas, creating a region of heated dust and gas that would spiral around the black hole, known as an accretion disk. Planets caught in the crossfires of the black hole would be doomed, even Jupiter. We'd be able to witness from Earth the tearing of planets from the tight gravitational pull of the black hole, so bye-bye Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
If the Black Hole Was Hungry and Invaded Our Solar System
Once the black hole "eats" its way into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, our luck would run out. At this point, the gravitational pull of the black hole would be so extremely vast that Earth would experience unseen supernatural earthquates and supervolcanoes in addition to coment/asteroid showers, essentially destroying the planet, melting it completely. Nearing Earth's orbit, the black hole would inhale the planet's atmosphere into itself like a vacuum, followed by the Earth's core and surface itself. All the other inner plants would follow suit to their inevitable fates.
Moving towards the sun, the black hole, depending on its initial mass, may put up a fight against the star: a war of gravity. If the sun were to pull through, the star could survive in some shape or form, but, most likely, the black hole will swallow the last of our solar system, ripping and tearing the sun into pieces and sucking all its lacerated contents into its accretion disk. By then, this hot spinning cloud of dust and gas would stretch thousands, perhaps millions, of miles from the black hole's small center, leaving behind a super-heated mark of spiralling chaos over our dead solar system.
How can something as huge as Earth, or even Jupiter, be sucked into a hole of nothingness with no effort? Black holes may be small compared to other celestial bodies, but its masses are several times greater, so how exactly could one tiny black hole swallow up an entire solar system? Take our Earth, for example. The density of a black hole would be the equivalent of taking the celestial body and crushing it with supreme strength so tight that even the atoms would collaspe in on themselves, reducing the Earth's size to about two inches across (like the size of a golf ball), having the same mass as before. Such a small figure with great mass and gravitational pull puts into good picture the weight of a black hole and its dauntless power.
The "Good-bye" List
The Outer Planets
The Inner Planets
The Sun
How Does a Black Hole Do It?
Have No Fear
The probabilty of a black hole invading our solar system is "more likely than winning the lottery ten times in a row, but less than being struck by lightning." Now, the odds of being stuck by lightning within a year in the U.S. is 1 in 700,000, and 1 in 3,000 in a lifetime. The chance of even winning the lottery once is approximately 1 in 175 million. In conclusion, the chance that a black hole sucking up our solar sytem whole is one in a trillion! So have no fear! A black hole may be in our cosmic neighborhood, but we are in a very safe place from all that chaos... for now.