Is anyone else terrified of black holes?
There’s nothing else that terrifies me more than black holes. Nothing. Not asteroids. Not gamma ray bursts. Not Cthulu. Not even your mom.
Black holes.
This has been a persistent pants shitting fear I’ve had ever since I was a small child.
I’ve always been a space nerd. I read a lot of Wikipedia as a kid.
When I finally discovered black holes I could barely even look at them. But the morbid curiosity prompted me to read more.
I found out…
These are the most powerful things in the universe. They are like… Fuck ups in the space time continuum. Objects so dense they bend spacetime in on itself. The gravity is so strong it crushes anything into it, even light. Which is why they’re black.
Imagine being in close proximity to one. Imagine the pure unfiltered terror.
It’s just a void. There’s nothing in it. When you finally get sucked into it, it’s just infinite blackness and crushing gravity. There will be no ground for you to land on, nothing to see. And the worst part is, you’ll never escape it.
If it’s a small one, you’ll be spaghettified long before you ever get that close. You’d be dead.
But a supermassive black hole will not spaghettifi you. Assuming you’re in a space ship or some kind of suit to keep you breathing, you would remain in tact and fully conscious during your descent into the supermassive black hole. You would experience falling into literal nothing with no escape. You’d see the entire universe bending and warping behind you.
Being next to hyper massive objects speeds up time significantly. Even the Earth does it a bit.
Time dilation next to a black hole would mean that by the time you actually get crushed by the singularity, the universe may have already experienced heat death. That’s how insane this is.
What’s even scarier than just falling into a black hole on your own is having one swing by and slowly devour your entire planet with you on it. Imagine being present when this happens. Seeing the black mass in the sky as your planet is ripped apart. Imagine seeing the sun ripped to pieces.
Yeah. This is terrifying. I’m not sure if it’s the blackness, or the infinite nothingness, or the inescapable destructive power. But this is the scariest thing in the universe.
When I was a kid, I knew all this.
And I told myself: “Well we’re way too far away from any of these to ever experience one.”
And that’s half true.
But what I didn’t know was…
Some black holes move. Like, Ricky bobby fast. They sonic the hedgehog through the universe at near light speed sometimes.
This is the worst. The worst thought.
At any moment, we could get very unlucky. A rogue traveling black hole could swing by our solar system at any time. We would never see it coming. They’re black holes. Scientists can only see the effects they have on surroundings, not the actual holes themselves.
It would just happen. Without warning.
At best, the solar system would be scrambled. Planets thrown all about. Sun possibly destroyed.
At worst, you get to see your entire planet devoured with you on it.
This is the worst possible apocalypse we could have. I can’t even imagine it.
Oh yeah, and I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of people talk about a supposed Planet X. They say there’s evidence of a very large planet or object in the outer reaches of our solar system throwing shit around and causing a gravitational mess. Scientists have been trying to find it for many years, but they can’t seem to.
It just recently came out that they think it’s a black hole out there. That’s why they can’t see it.
Yeah. This might be a lot closer than we think it is. I’ve metaphorically shit my pants over this several times.
Overall, I just can’t fathom this shit. I can’t get over it. It’s a fear I’ve never been able to shake.
In No Man’s Sky you are encouraged to fly into black holes because they teleport you closer to your goal in game. But I just CANNOT do it. Whenever I run into one on accident I shudder and look away from my screen. Sometimes I’ll even load a save so I don’t have to look at the fucking thing.
If I do have to fly into one, I take my headphones off and look away from my TV.
Whenever I see a black hole picture or video I also just can’t look at it. I can’t do it.
It’s real bad. It’s so bad.
I know the world will end, but pray to whatever you believe in that it’s not this way.
I just wanted to see if anyone else shared my batshit crazy phobia.
Have fun sleeping tonight. Once you know you can never unknow.