How Will This Astronaut Die? Spaghettified or Flash Fried?
Would an astronaut who falls into a black hole be “stretched like spaghetti” or flash-fried by a firewall of energy? The answer to this question has great significance.
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.
In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking described what would happen to an astronaut who fell into a black hole. The unlucky astronaut would be “stretched like spaghetti” and torn apart by the gravitational gradient.
Or might this astronaut be flash-fried by a firewall of energy?
As The New York Times reported, there is a whole cottage industry of black hole astronaut death theorizers, and at stake is the basis of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Read more here.
Read Stephen Hawking’s lecture “Into a Black Hole” here.
Read a challenge to Hawking here.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.
