Death By Spaghettification

If I could choose my own untimely death, this is surely the way I would want to go. 

I do not mean death by Italian Cuisine. After a semester of eating in the Rome mensa, I am convinced that an overabundance of pasta and olive oil is actually more painful than it is lethal. I am talking about falling into a black hole. 

“Falling” may not be the most accurate description. Contrary to common misconceptions, accidently tumbling into a black hole is quite hard to do. A space ship approaching a black hole’s gravitational field is much more likely to “fall” into an orbit around it. Leaving the observable universe would have to be a much more conscious decision. But of course, after the many light years of travel it would take to reach a black hole I am certain that intense boredom would be enough reason to intentionally break this orbit and head for the event horizon—from which there is no return. 

Assuming this were an average sized black hole, I would be dead before even crossing the event horizon. Accelerating quickly, I would feel an intense force of gravity. I am not exactly a tall person, but the tidal forces would become so strong so quickly that the small distance from my head to my feet would still contain an immense difference in gravitational strength. If I had jumped feet first, they would be pulled much more strongly than my head and I would begin to be stretched out and squeezed from the sides. (Not exactly a pleasant experience, but sure to be a quick one.) As a black hole can be thought of as a “bottomless pit in spacetime,” this process could go on ad infinitum (The Essential). The massive tidal forces would stretch my body out until I became a thin noodle of atoms, leaving behind me the legacy of becoming the first human space spaghetti. 

-Angela


1) The Essential Cosmic Perspective, 4th Edition by Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, and Voit, Addison-Wesley, Inc. (2010).

Photo Courtesy of Google Images and Angela's awesome photoshop skills.