Earth eaten by a black hole?

I'm pretty new here (visited a good amount, haven't posted much) but recently watched BBC's series on Black Holes. It layed out how there are many within our galaxy that are extremely powerful. I'm just curious to know what our chances would be of running into of these things. Obviously it would mean certain demise for us and our entire solar system. How likely would it be to occur?

0 Chance(at least in our life times and the life time of our star). We (our solar system) orbits a Black Hole which is at the center of our galaxy.

Heeey dont forget theres other smaller black holes wandering around. One could expect them to occasionally suck up stars and planets here and there.
Im sure someone knows the statistical chance but Id equate it to the chance of getting hit by a bullet shot straight up into the air.

Dont get me wrong but according to walt disney movie "Black hole" which i base all my space knowledge on , we are ment to end up in a new universe with naked women with large breasts or did i dream that bit.

The throuble with black holes is you can't see them!

SO if there are smaller ones floating around near us we would probably over look them. However, our area of the galaxy isn't really old enough for many to have formed...

I wouldn't worry about it though.

Originally posted by Quest
The throuble with black holes is you can't see them!

SO if there are smaller ones floating around near us we would probably over look them. However, our area of the galaxy isn't really old enough for many to have formed...

I wouldn't worry about it though.

I think they look like stars, or just black spots ( on a telescope ), and stars go around them and move, but that one "star" looking object stays in place.

The way I figure it if we all are killed by a blackhole we will ALL be dead. So, no need to feel sad about ebing dead or worry about it because hey we're all dead!

PS: Like every year atleast one person gets killed or hurt from dumbasses shooting guns into the air on 4th of july here in Albuquerque. So, I sure hope those aren't the chances of a blackhole killing us. One in a million and a half is still alot!

There may be several blackholes in the galaxy, but were not that far into the galaxy. The Milkyway is a spiral with little arms trailing off of it and were located in the tip of one of those arms. Now just how in hell they figured that out is beyond me, but so far thats what the astronomers are saying.

Besides, we keep a pretty good watch on the stars around us. I'm sure if any one of them fall off the radar some alarm bells will go off somewhere.

Wupy

PS: Like every year atleast one person gets killed or hurt from dumbasses shooting guns into the air on 4th of july here in Albuquerque.

ahahahahaha awesome.
Actually I meant standing in place and trying to shoot straight up, and actually have the bullet come back down on you.
THAT would be hard

Besides, we keep a pretty good watch on the stars around us. I'm sure if any one of them fall off the radar some alarm bells will go off somewhere.

Plus we would probably experience the gravitational effects looooong before it ever got close.

There isn't all that much chance. Our sun, as I recall, is located in the spiral arm of the Milky Way, in a region of relativley young stars. Seeing as how black holes can only be formed by large stars (typically >3 solar masses) in type IIa supernovas (I think I'm right... any astronomers around?), and there aren't really any supernova remnants or really big stars nearby, I think we should be safe.

And incidentally, black holes aren't like vaccum cleaners at all. They don't "suck in" stuff, unless said stuff is within the event horizon of the hole (eg. point of no return). If the sun turned into a black hole right this very instant, the earth would just continue rotating around it with no difference. Of course, we'd probably be fried to a crisp by the nova, but no worries, that's not supposed to happen for another 5 billion or so years...

the Sun is too small to turn into a black hole and so are lots of the stars

around us. what we might actually have to worry about though is the

possibility of a white or black dwarf colliding with the Sun. as you might

know, right before a star dies, it expandes and then collapses, if the the

force is strong enough, if the star is big enough, it will create a black hole,

if not however, it will collapse and make an INCREDIBLY dense white

dwarf, which over the course of a couple million years, will cool off to

become a black dwarf. now, if any dwarf were to run into a star, no matter

how big really, it would be dense enough to actually plow its way through

it and cause the star to explode, if that were to happen to the Sun, Earth

would melt VERY quickly and we wouldn't suffer for TOO long. but don't

count on that happening. it probably won't. but when our sun dies in a

couple billion years, it will expand to engulf mercury and venus, and be

close enough to melt Earth and meybe Pluto along with it, sounds like fun

huh?

edited for spelling

[edit on 17-6-2005 by midgetstar]

Originally posted by mrwupy
Besides, we keep a pretty good watch on the stars around us. I'm sure if any one of them fall off the radar some alarm bells will go off somewhere.

Not really. The area of the sky being watched at any given time is very very small so the chances of missing something is very high.

Nearest black hole to the Earth = 1,600 light years

Originally posted by NWguy83
Nearest black hole to the Earth = 1,600 light years

Care to back that up with a link?

here`s the link for the closest,which they say is 1,600 l/years
www.space.com...

So that means its 9,281,280,000,000,000 miles from Earth.


[edit on 18-6-2005 by NWguy83]

What i do find mind distorting is when something is caught and pulled into the event horizon of an average size black hole spettification occurs,but when then same happens with a super massive black hole you can travel all the way to the singularity and then your reduced to infinite smallness??

One thought i had after Steve Hawkins discovered that black holes leak out matter over time, was that when it had leaked out enough,a neutron star would have to pop out of it.Or maybe not?


[edit on 18-6-2005 by gps777]

Originally posted by midgetstar
the Sun is too small to turn into a black hole and so are lots of the stars

around us. what we might actually have to worry about though is the

possibility of a white or black dwarf colliding with the Sun.

You refer to a "black dwarf" several times. And I don't want to slight any black dwarves that may be reading this (you know who you are), but the term is:

brown dwarf
n.

A celestial body that resembles a star but does not emit light because it is too small to ignite internal nuclear fusion. The planet Jupiter is a small brown dwarf.
dictionary.reference.com...


So you see, we have a "brown dwarf" in our own solar system, and we're lucky to have it. Without the big daddy planets in our system, sweeping up debris over billions of years, there would be no life on Earth.

There is so much misinformation in this thread that I think it would be best for everyone to just stop for a few minutes and do some googling. All valid questions though.

The chance is smaller than a star coming close enough to the earth to change its orbit, swallow it or fry it. Space is so empty that the chance of stars coming close to each other - if not formed together at least - is very small.