The concept of a body or an object with such a massive gravitational force that even light could not escape was actually propounded by astronomer John Michell in 1783–84, long before the Robert von Mayer and William Thomson’s Conservation of energy or the law of Black Body radiation by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1860. But, it wasn’t until the 20th century, that we were able to understand the influence of gravity on those bodies with the help of general relativity.
A Black Hole in Your Pocket
Assuming that you are aware of the dynamics of a black hole, did it ever occur to you that what might happen if a black hole magically appear near you? How it might affect you and your surroundings? Well, one thing is for sure that you will die. Now, let’s assume that the size of our black hole is exactly like a coin. Then there are two possibilities, either the black hole has the mass of a coin or the width of a coin.
In the first case, if the black hole has the mass similar to a nickel, which is 5 grams, then its radius would be near 10-30 meters. If you compare it with a hydrogen atom which is around 10-11 meters it will give you a clear idea of how small this black hole actually is. A black hole this compact in nature would also have an extremely shorter lifetime before to perish due to the effects of Hawking radiation.
Media Courtesy: Kurzgesagt
In theory, it would lose its entire mass in just 10-23 seconds. Its 5 grams of total mass will change into 450 terajoules of energy or 449.377589 terajoules to be exact (thank you Einstein). This will eventually lead to a massive explosion, 3 times bigger than the nuclear explosion on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined. You can easily guess the outcome here.
The Second Case
The black hole would be considered much much bigger than the previous one if it had the diameter of a nickel. In fact, it might be slightly more massive than the earth. With a surface gravity many times bigger than that of the earth, it will insert such a massive force on you that they’d rip apart your body from the very core. It would consume you instantly, even without realizing.
You’d experience gravity on a whole new different level around such massive objects. Right now, from your tip to toe, both are at the same distance from the Earth’s core, but if you are currently standing on a black hole of a size of nickel, your lower body would be tens and hundreds of times closer to the center with gravitational force thousands times larger then the force on your head, which will tear you in a billion pieces before sucking inside.
How it will Affect the Earth and Our Solar System?
Artist’s impression
One might think that the black hole will just consume the entire planet inside out after sinking towards its center. But theoretically it would be slightly different. Not only the black hole would dip inside the earth’s core, but also force the planet to revolve around it. With each passage, the black hole will consume a chunk of Earth’s mass and when its done feeding, the earth will collapse into a circular disk consisting of nothing but hot rock surrounding the black hole. In the meantime, the black hole will grow slowly, eventually doubling its mass.
It wouldn’t just stop at this. At this point of time, the black hole will become a dominant force in this part of our solar system. It will distort the moon’s orbit, which will now become highly elliptical. The immense gravitational pull from the black hole will attract near earth asteroids and even possibly disrupt the asteroid belt, turning this into a place for regular asteroid impacts and meteor shower for a few million years.
Read: All Interesting Facts About Black Holes and White Holes
Although, the other planets in our solar system will slightly get disturbed, they are most likely to maintain similar orbits like what we see today. It will be a sad ending for our planet earth, and possibly human, except they have successfully colonized the planet Mars or any other Jupiter’s moon in that sense. So all in all just hope that black hole of any size don’t appear on the earth or near earth.
