I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Boron Zone. It has a range of scientists studying all different topics. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
Black holes don’t “suck” in the same way that vacuum cleaners do. That is due to a difference in air pressure, as you identify in the question.
Black holes instead exert a force on other objects with mass due to the force of gravity – the same force that keeps our feet on the ground, the moon orbiting around the Earth, and the Earth orbiting around the sun. Generally, if you are travelling with some velocity, unless you pointed yourself straight at a black hole, you wouldn’t get “sucked” in. If you were traveling to the side of it, you would curve around it, but keep on going, a bit like how comets move around the sun. I tried to find a good image, but didn’t have any luck.
However, if there is some drag that causes you to slow down, that is when you will slowly spiral in! This happens to satellites sometimes as well!
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As Matthew says, black holes don’t “suck” in the same way a vacuum cleaner does. They are so massive and so dense that their gravity pulls in everything, even light. They distort space itself!
Luckily there are none close enough to Earth to cause us any problems. The closer you are to a black hole, the more likely you are to be pulled in by it’s gravity. Despite this, there are some stars that orbit the massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy – which is how we know that it’s there. You can’t see them after all!
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