Science Questions

If the milky way went through a black hole, would it come out of the other side intact? Would we survive? Keith, Sudbury

Black holes are a lot smaller than the milky way, which actually has what’s called a Supermassive black hole in it’s centre.  Each galaxy seems to have a black hole in the middle of it, around which the stars in the galaxy orbit.  As far as we know, there is no ‘other side’ to a black hole, and if we were to go into one, we would undergo a process known as spaghettification, where the gravity of the black hole pulls matter into long thin shapes, rather like spaghetti.

June 2007