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You can orbit a black hole like any other object, and most things do, for a long, long time. Hell, the whole milky way is basically orbiting a black hole (and a
by jvanderbot 5y ago
You can orbit a black hole like any other object, and most things do, for a long, long time. Hell, the whole milky way is basically orbiting a black hole (and a lot of other mass near the center).
- fennecfoxen 5y agoAnd orbiting a black hole is just like orbiting any other object, except the surface is much closer to the center of mass.
- ben_w 5y agoAnd some of the stars close to the Milky Way’s have completed entire orbits on camera: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1825e/ https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1825e/
- thehappypm 5y agoI recently learned about delta-V as a concept. Flying directly into the sun, for example, is basically not possible for a spacecraft with today’s technology, without dozens of gravity boosts. You need to basically undo the speed of your initial orbit, which for something in orbit around a star is huge! A black hole would be even more difficult and require more Delta-V to fly into, if you’re in any sort of orbit. So you should definitely expect tons of stuff in orbit around them!
- acomjean 5y agoSo all matter is doomed to get sucked into one of these things eventually?
- jvanderbot 5y agoAFAIK, all matter is doomed to be torn apart by the expansion of the universe.
- isomel 5y agoNo. For the same reason all matter in the solar system is not doomed to get sucked into the sun. A black hole is just a very dense objet things can fall into if they have the right trajectory. But more often than not, the trajectory will be an hyperbola or a parabola around it, and the matter don't reach the event horizon.