Black holes are one of our universe’s greatest mysteries, with no one really understanding what happens once an object passes one of their event horizons. However, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has now built a supercomputer simulation revealing what it might theoretically be like to enter one of these cosmic vortices.
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00:00 Black holes are one of our universe's greatest mysteries, with no one really understanding
00:08 what happens once an object passes one of their event horizons.
00:11 However, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has now built a supercomputer
00:16 simulation revealing what it might theoretically be like to enter one of these cosmic vortices.
00:23 Astrophysicist Jeremy Schnittman ran two simulations, the first of which shows what it would be
00:27 like for an astronaut to graze an event horizon, but not pass through it.
00:30 An event horizon is essentially the point of no return with regards to black holes,
00:35 as anything which passes over one, even light, can never escape again.
00:38 And that's one reason why black holes are so mysterious.
00:41 We don't really know what happens on the other side.
00:43 Even physics enters the territory of paradox when attempting to define the inner workings
00:47 of black holes.
00:48 Still, a second computer simulation attempts to show, as best we can guess, what plunging
00:52 into a black hole might be like.
00:54 The simulation begins relatively similarly to the first, until it ends in utter blackness.
00:59 No doubt a byproduct of physics breaking down around you, Schnittman says that on a consumer
01:03 grade computer, the calculations used to produce these visualizations would have taken some
01:08 ten years to complete.
01:10 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:13 (upbeat music)