Spaghettification
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In astrophysics, spaghettification (sometimes referred to as the noodle effect)[1] is the pulling and pushing of objects into long thin spaghetti-like shapes as they go near a strong field of gravity. It is caused by extreme tidal forces. Near a black hole, the pulling and pushing are so powerful that no object can resist it. In a small region, the pushing balances the pulling so that a small object being spaghettified experiences no change in volume.
Stephen Hawking described the flight of a fictional astronaut who was passing within a black hole's event horizon. The astronaut he describes is "stretched like spaghetti" by the difference in gravitational force, or the gradient, from head to toe.[2] The reason this happens is that the gravity force exerted by the singularity would be much stronger at one end of the body than the other. If one were to fall into a black hole feet first, the gravity at their feet would be much stronger than at their head, causing the person to be vertically pulled. Along with that, the right side of the body will be pulled to the left, and the left side of the body will be pulled to the right, pushing the sides of the person inward.[3] Spaghettification of a star was seen for the first time in 2018 by scientists observing a pair of colliding galaxies approximately 150 million light-years from Earth.[4]
Spaghettification Media
Tidal forces acting on a spherical body in a non-homogeneous gravitational field. In this diagram, the gravitational force originates from a source to the right. It shows both the tidal field (thick red arrows) and the gravity field (thin blue arrows) exerted on Earth's surface and center (label O) by a source (label S).
The spaghettification of four objects falling towards a planet
Close-up of star near a supermassive black hole (artist's impression).
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References
- ↑ Wheeler, J. Craig (2007), Cosmic catastrophes: exploding stars, black holes, and mapping the universe (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press, p. 182, ISBN 978-0-521-85714-7
- ↑ Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Dell Publishing Group. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-553-10953-5.
- ↑ Astronomy. OpenStax. 2016. pp. 862. ISBN 978-1938168284.
- ↑ National Radio Astronomy Observatory (2018-06-14). "Astronomers See Distant Eruption as Black Hole Destroys Star". Press release. https://public.nrao.edu/news/black-hole-destroys-star/. Retrieved 2018-06-15.
