Black holes are not exactly holes, in fact they are large amount of matter that has been compressed into a very small space and because the matter is so compressed, gives it an incredibly strong gravitational pull such that not even light can escape a black hole’s grasp, and if we get too close to a black hole, we would get compressed to an infinitely small dot. A black hole entering our solar system would not be a good news at all but just how bad would it be? The extent of the havoc that a single black hole could cause in our solar system depends on how big that black hole was and how far into the solar system it got.
If we are talking of Super-massive black hole like the one residing at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy which is Sagittarius A then our chances of survival would be very slim because a monster of that size would cause us trouble even from a distance of few light years away. Presumably super-massive black holes have stars, planets, asteroids and comets orbiting around them and all the debris that a super-massive black hole picked up on it’s way through space would bombard our solar system, then that gigantic black hole would tug whatever was left into an orbit around it, we would be long gone by that time, wiped out by some rogue planet that smashed into Earth.
Let’s try our chances with a stellar black hole, this is a black hole up to 20 times more massive than our Sun, if this kind of black hole made it to the outer reaches of our solar system, it would cause a gravitational mess in the Oort Cloud which is the area of icy comet like objects, a stellar black hole would throw more comets and asteroids into the inner solar system which would strike the planets and our home planet Earth might take some hits too, but that would be just a warm up, as a black hole makes it’s way through the solar system, it would disrupt the orbits of all the planets in the solar system.
 |
| This would be the fate of Jupiter with a black hole around it |
if we talk of the biggest planet in our solar system which is Jupiter, the black hole would pull all the gases from the giant planet turning it into a swirling hot disc and it would keep pulling until it consumes Jupiter entirely. What would happen to our own planet Earth in this gravitational mess? well things would not be good for Earth obviously, the black hole would start affecting us even from a distance of Pluto’s orbit, first it will pull our planet out of habitable zone and we humans might not be ready to adopt to this change, we would not have much time to complain though since there would be worst things ahead as the black hole approaches Earth it would cause cracking of the planet’s crust, we would see extreme Earth quakes and volcanic eruptions, the ocean tides would be devastating too and by the time black hole pass Earth’s orbit.
