Sorry, science fiction fans. You can’t actually survive a trip through a black hole. And if you tried to take a plunge into one, like Matthew McConaughey in the movie Interstellar, you’d be ripped apart long before you could find out what’s on the other side.
To fully appreciate why you can’t just swan dive or pilot your spaceship into a black hole, you must first understand the basic properties of these gravitational goliaths. Simply put, a black hole is a place where gravity is so strong that no light — or anything else, for that matter — can escape.
Black holes are aptly named because they usually don't reflect or emit light. They’re only visible when they’re feeding on stars or gas clouds that stray too close to their boundary, called the event horizon. Beyond the event horizon lies a truly minuscule point called a singularity, where gravity is ...
