Simulation of Falling into a Black Hole. Image Source: NASA
Tech Daily, Beijing, May 9th (by Zhang Mengran) - Have you ever wondered what it would be like to fall into a black hole? A new simulation report released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) provides the answer. Precisely simulating this unimaginable process helps connect the theory of relativity with the actual consequences in the real universe.
The gravitational force of a black hole is so strong that it distorts spacetime itself. According to NASA's report, a person traveling around a black hole in a spaceship for 6 hours would age 36 minutes less than the other crew members on the mother ship. Researchers used a supercomputer to create a simulated journey: it assumes an experiencer plunging into a supermassive black hole, where viewers can imagine themselves (the experiencer) tumbling during the fall, passing through ghostly light particle tracks orbiting the black hole, and ultimately reaching a point of no return - the event horizon. There, no substance, including light, can escape.
Objects approaching a black hole typically undergo extreme stretching before reaching the event horizon, a process known as "spaghettification." Imagine this: if your feet enter the black hole first, the gravitational force acting on your feet would be stronger than that on your head, causing your body to stretch like spaghetti.
The black hole chosen for simulation by astrophysicists is a supermassive black hole. The "monster" lurking at the center of the Milky Way is one such supermassive black hole. The research team simulated what might happen when one gets too close. The virtual experiencer would become like spaghetti, but before that, they must first cross the event horizon.
The "Event Horizon Telescope" once captured a famous photo of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, marking humanity's first-ever image of a black hole. The center of the image is endless black, while the outer ring resembles a glowing gas donut, which is actually an accretion disk. It is through this accretion disk that the experiencer begins this simulation journey. As the experiencer reaches the event horizon, darkness closes in. Just 12.8 seconds after passing the event horizon, the immense gravity would tear them apart. Within microseconds, the remaining super-compressed matter would collide with the singularity, the center of the black hole. The journey from the event horizon to the singularity spans 128,000 kilometers, but it all happens in the blink of an eye.
