Expert: Ed - 10/26/2007

Question
Will the black hole ever suck the earth into it?


Answer
Brandon, I am sorry to be late answering this question.  I live in Massachusetts, and we are all very preoccupied watching the World Series, this week.

But your question is MUCH more important, and much more significant, than the World Series.  So thank you for asking it.

First of all, you asked about "the" black hole.  It sounds like maybe you think there is only ONE scary black hole, sort of like there is only one Dracula, or only one Frankenstein.

Actually, astronomers think there are millions of them.  MILLIONS.  Luckily, they are all very, very far away.  Astronomers think that it is highly unlikely that we will ever get sucked up by any of the black holes.  If we ever do, it will probably be a long, long, long time in the future.  I mean, possibly hundreds of millions of years in the future.  Ask your science teacher to help you understand how much our technology has improved just in the past 100 years, and think about how much longer 100 million years is.  One hundred years looks like this: 100 years.  One hundred million years looks like this: 100,000,000 years.  

Maybe now you will feel more confident that by the time we ever get menaced by a black hole, (IF it ever happens, hundreds of millions of years from now), by that time we will all have amazing spaceships that can save our lives.

There are some black holes that travel around the universe, and those are the ones we are the most worried about.  But we know that we have not been sucked into any black holes in the past 4 billion years or so, simply because our planet is still here.  So, we probably don't need to worry very much about the next 100 years, or even the next few million years.

Here are some links to look at:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/blackhole_010913.html

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Science/story?id=2365372&page=1

If you would like to discuss this more, please e-mail me again, and I promise I will get back to you faster this time.

Keep Looking Up!
--Ed