Plummeting into a Supermassive Black Hole: A NASA Simulation Shows the Dire Consequences

NASA’s latest graphic illustrates the dangers of falling into a supermassive black hole, like the one at the center of the Milky Way. Researchers at the NASA Climate Simulation Center used the Discover supercomputer to create a simulation that shows what it would be like to fall through an accretion disk of glowing gas around a black hole.

The video depicts the observation angle as you descend into the black hole, passing through light particles swirling around it until you reach the event horizon, where even light cannot escape. The gravity near a black hole is so strong that it distorts space-time, causing time to slow down and objects to move close to the speed of light.

Stellar-mass black holes are more common in the universe and have small event horizons that create intense tidal forces due to changes in gravity. The spaghetti effect occurs when objects are torn apart before reaching the event horizon as they approach these black holes. However, falling into a supermassive black hole would still result in this effect, but with one crucial difference: you would first pass through the event horizon before being destroyed by gravity within seconds and compressed matter reaching almost instantaneously after crossing it.

The simulation is based on data from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Event Horizon Telescope’s observation of the Milky Way’s central black hole. Despite their massive size and relatively calm nature compared to stellar-mass black holes, supermassive black holes can still pose significant threats to any object or person who gets too close.