Bill's Topics

I couldn't believe it when I read it.  On the internet, there are multiple web sites where people are advertising that in the year 2012, the earth will be sucked into our Galaxy's central black hole!  I don't mean to be negative about this belief, but,  ARE THESE PEOPLE CRAZY?

The Facts

What is a black hole?

A black hole is an area of space that is so heavy, it will not even allow light to escape it.  These objects are caused by very heavy stars.  When these stars die, there is no more nuclear force keeping the star in the 'shape' of a star, so all of the mass of the star collapses into a 'black hole'

Our galaxy's central black hole:

• is 2,000,000 (two million) times the mass of our own sun
• is 26,000 light years away.  That is 152,510,000,000,000,000 miles away
• is 1,640,651,397 times farther away fro the earth than our sun is
• Newton's law states that the farther away a body is, the less of a gravitational pull it has on us

Distance from our Black Hole and getting there

The planet earth is, at a minimum, 26,000 (twenty six thousand) light years away from our galaxy's central black hole.  This means, that if our planet were able to travel at the speed of light, it would take 26,000 years for us to get anywhere near the milky way's central black hole.  Not even taking into account the fact that if the planet earth were to be accelerated to the speed of light, because of general relativity, the earth's mass would reach infinity, which by all physical standards, is impossible.

What force is going to drag us to the center of our galaxy to get sucked up by the black hole?  Gravity?  Here are some facts:

• The pull of our own moon's gravity on the earth (both the earth and the moon pulling on one another) totals out at 19,813,000,000,000,000,000 Newtons (a measure of gravitational pull).  This might sound like a lot of force but.....
• The pull of our galaxy's central black hole is only 26,200,000,000 Newtons.
• That means that the pull of the milky way's central black hols is only .000000001% as strong as the pull of our moon on the earch, or said another way, the pull of the moon on the earch is 7,562,213,740 times greater than the pull of our galaxy's central black hole on the earth!

In Summary

There is more of a chance that the earth's moon will suck up the earth before our galaxy's central black hole does.  And, if by some miracle, we began rocketing to the center of our milky way galaxy, it would take us thousands or millions of years to get there.  So, what difference does it make?  And, if it were to happen (which it will not), what can we do about it?  NOTHING!

Everyone can sleep tonight.