• Question: Whats at the other side of a black hole?

    Asked by Beng to Pete, Natalie, Keith, Abbey, Aaron on 10 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by Maya Cove, wiktor_wochna.
    • Photo: Aaron Boardley

      Aaron Boardley answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      Black holes are collapsed stars. So above, below, and all around them is space – just like other stars, including our sun.

      However, they have REALLY STRONG gravity, and if you get too close, you’ll be pulled in so much that you won’t be able to escape again. This point of no return is called the ‘event horizon’.

      On the other side of the ‘event horizon’, a lot of the normal rules of physics as we understand them don’t work in the same way as gravity is so strong. We can made predictions about these areas using maths, but we can’t go insider a black hole to test because we wouldn’t be able to get out again.

      In fact, if you went to close to a black hole you’d be pulled in to it with such force that it would stretch your body, like a long string of spaghetti. In fact, scientists call this ‘spaghettification’ or ‘the noodle effect’ – honestly!

    • Photo: Natalie Garrett

      Natalie Garrett answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      It’s a very interesting thing to wonder, isn’t it? Have you seen the film Interstellar? Safe to say the answer is not like what you see in that film!

      The fact is, we don’t know for sure what’s inside a black hole. There are some people who think that if you went into a black hole, you would get sucked into a tunnel (the so-called “Einstein-Rosen bridge”) which would shoot you out into a parallel universe. Other people think you’d be destroyed by the immense gravitational fields. We don’t yet know for sure, but maybe one day we will!

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