What if you fell into a black hole?

A black hole is a spherical object in space that has gravity just like all the planets we know; however, the gravity on one is (technically) infinitely times more stronger. Black holes are seen as bright rings with an empty inside. This space is empty because of light not being able to escape. If light can’t escape, it can’t be seen by our eyes. Therefore creating an illusion of a round blob that seems empty, but might really have something totally different on the inside. If an object starts to get sucked by a black hole, it’ll still have a chance at escaping until it’s reached the event horizon — the surface of a black hole where nothing can escape because gravity is too strong. As the object moves closer to the centre (singularity), gravity applied to the object keeps on increasing. Because of this, we can say that the gravity at the bottom of the object is much stronger than at its top. The gravitational gradient between the top and bottom causes the bottom to move faster, stretching the object. This concept is known as spaghettification. Once the object has reached the singularity, it’ll have already been compressed into an infinitely small speck. Now, if you fell in, many similar and different strange events would happen. Likewise to an object, if you are yet to pass the event horizon, you’d still be able to escape in some powerful rocket until you've passed the event horizon. Before we find out why what happens afterwards/following your crossing through the event horizon, you’ve got to understand the term spacetime. Three main things to consider when learning about spacetime are:

1. Earth is a large object in space.

2. Spacetime is the combination of space and time.

3. Objects in space affect the curvature of spacetime depending on their mass.

Back to black holes; one thing that happens as you get sucked in is that time outside the black hole will seem to speed up because of a lesser curve in spacetime there. The curvature of spacetime where you’re at will be stronger, slowing down time for an outside observer looking at you. Even if wherever you’re looking at looks like time is speeding up you will feel normal. This concept shows how the speed of time varies on the person’s frame of reference and that you will eventually see the end of the universe.

Another thing that you’d experience similarly to an object is spaghettification. You’ll be stretched into a string of disconnected atoms and die. If your corpse were laid out straight, it would span about 70 light-years.

Even though it might not be the best way to die, there is one consolation: In space, no one can hear your scream.

Don’t worry though; although black holes can be very big, they are very far away from us. The closest one to us is 1,560 light-years or 14.8 quintillion metres away from Earth.