Kevin Huynh

Professor Gretchen Pratt

UWRT 1102014
April 1, 2015
Want to go into a black hole?
How would you like to die? Would you like to die by being sucked into a black hole?
Personally, I think that would be kind of cool. You would be able to say "I went out in a star."
Only problem is that it is you would be able to tell the tale anyone and that it is painful. The
process of spaghettification is what makes it painful. Just imagine being stretched out into a
very thin and long shape. This happens because the part of the body that is closer to the black
hole will have a greater gravitational pull than the part that is further away. You would also be
sucked in. It is as if someone is slurping spaghetti up from a plate.
What is a black hole? A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that
even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny
space. This can happen when a star is dying (Smith).
VSauce?
I came across a YouTube account a long time ago named VSauce. I came across it around
the time of early high school. This YouTube account at first was a channel that talked about
things you can do on the internet. As of today, it has changed to an educational channel. I had
followed this YouTube account since then. I have learned a lot of information watching these
videos. The content always interested me because he would ask a strange question, then use

science and studies that relate to it to answer the question. I was tricked and was pulled into the
strange question and watched the video. One example of a video was What color is a Mirror?
The interesting question pulled me in. Then some videos he had put out about space and this is
what got me interested in space. Travel INSIDE a black hole and Whats the Brightest Thing
in the Universe? This is what led me to choose my topic about a star. So when I had to choose
my topic of death, I didnt want to do it about a person but something else.
Death of a Star!
No not about a star that is a famous person but as in a luminous ball of gas, mostly
hydrogen and helium, held together by its own gravity (Temming). Out of the possibilities of
the death of a star, I thought that the formation of a black hole would be interesting. The thought
of how there is nothing in the center of it is a mystery. An interesting myth was that the center of
a black hole was a worm hole that can instantly transport you to a place in the universe.
Dont head towards the black hole.
Everyone has heard of the term Dont head towards the light right? When a person
comes back to life after on the brink of death right? What if I told you there was an even brighter
place that you would not want to go? A black hole will eat up the gas and debris from the stars
and swirl into accretion disks. In the disk, the debris spins at unfathomable speeds being pulled
by a black hole billions of times more massive than our Sun (Stevens). I found that the accretion
disk creates so much friction that it generates heat. It is so hot that it is called a quasar. Quasars
are so bright that they shine thousands of times more brightly than galaxies containing billions of
stars (Stevens). When I heard this, I couldnt imagine how bright this thing could be. The first
quasar identified, 3C 273, had an absolute magnitude of -26.7, making it four trillion time

brighter than our Sun (Stevens). Quasars being billions of light years away, they are one of the
oldest things in our universe. Since they are really old, they will probably most likely already be
gone because what we see are just their ghosts. Light that left when they were active that
traveled longer than they could live (Stevens). The brightest places have the darkest, emptiest
skies The brightest things in the universe, quasars, are caused by the darkest things in the
universe black holes. The process that unshackles the most light is caused by the thing that best
imprisons it (Stevens). When I heard this, I was mind blown. I just couldnt believe that that
was the brightest thing in the universe.
I take something, make it nothing.
What does a black hole do? A black hole is an object in space with a density that is
infinite with a gravitational pull so great that not even light could escape it. Since nothing is
faster than the speed of light, nothing can escape from the black hole. If you were to head
towards a black hole, that an observer standing and watching you jump into a black hole, would
see something quite strange. They wouldnt see you get sucked quickly into the hole- instead,
they would see your approach become slower, and slower until you reach a point known as the
event-horizon. This is a point in space where, once crossed, theres no going back. It is at that
point that light can no longer escape. And, so, to a person watching you fall into the hole that
would be where your journey ended. You would seem almost frozen in space, the light coming
off your body becoming increasingly red-shifted until you simply faded into nothingness
(Stevens) I heard this and thought that it would be kind of weird to watch but wonder what the
person going into the black hole would experience. Would they also seem to feel slower? So then
he explains what the person going into the black hole would experience. As you continue to
approach the black holes singularity, your view of the entire universe would get compressed into

a smaller and smaller point in space behind you It might take us hours to actually reach a point
where things started to hurt. Why would they hurt? Well, the closer you get to the singularity, the
more significant the difference in gravitational pull across space. And, so, parts of me that are
closer to the singularity would be pulled more strongly than parts that were facing away and my
entire body would be stretched toward the singularity. The effect would be so incredible,
scientists dont call it stretching, and they call it Spaghettification. Once you reach this point,
you would be dead. Your molecules would be violently ripped and stretched apart, and when they
got to the singularity, well, we dont really know what would happen (Stevens). This process
sounded very painful. But I thought would be pretty cool how you would die by a black hole.
There would be nothing of you left in the universe. A black hole would take you and make you
completely disappear.
Would you want to dive into a black hole?
I personally might want to die in a black hole. Sure I dont like pain, but I think it would
be cool. Dying to the point where there is nothing left for anyone to look back on. There might
be nothing left, but it would be a death where everyone would remember me by. I doubt there
will be something that would take me twenty-five thousand light years to our resident black hole
at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, so that I could dive into the black hole. One day,
someone might invent a way to travel that long in a span of one persons life time. Until then, Ill
stay here on Earth.

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