They feed on anything and everything that comes into the vicinity.

They're dense and unpredictably volatile, and they don't let anything I mean, anything escape their gravitational grasp.

Going to the event horizon of a black hole would be a very daring, dangerous experience.

Let's get to it already.

This is what if and here's what would happen if you traveled to a black hole.

Not all black holes are the same.

Some of them are relatively small, reaching only 10 to 20 times the mass of our sun.

There are millions of them in the Milky Way alone.

Then there are truly gravitational giants, supermassive black holes, and they are called supermassive for nothing.

They can grow millions of times the mass of our sun, and they're lurking at the center of almost every galaxy, including our own.

Choosing a black hole to travel to is the first thing you need to do before jumping into a spaceship.

Where would you find yourself a black hole that wouldn't gobble you up the second you arrive in its territory, And how close could you get?

Tau one.

Before it squeezed and stretched and turned you into spaghetti.

I hope you've seen enough.

What if stories by now to know that a black hole isn't something you can see with your own eyes?

What you would see is stars collapsing into it because black holes swallow everything they can reach with their gravity there especially hard to catch on camera.

This is the first and only picture of a black hole we have so far.

It shows the orbit of photons around a supermassive black hole in the galaxy.

Messier 87 and it took eight huge telescopes across the Earth.

Five days of observing and two years of combining the signals together to produce this one image.

So maybe you won't need to bring your camera with you this time.

Okay, Now let me pick a black hole for you.

I suggest the nearest one V 616 monastery Rodas or simply V 616 months.

It's only 3000 light years away, and it has the mass of 9 to 13 times that of our sun.

Now, even if you could thrust through space at the speed of light, it would still take you 3000 years to reach V 616 months.

Our universe is just too enormous to travel around.

That means only one thing you'd have to jump toe thousands of years into the future, where there might be the technology to get close enough to your destination.

But no, it's not time for that.

What if story just yet.

Let's keep heading towards V 616 month.

This is where the fun part begins.

As you're heading towards V 616 months, even as you're light years away from it, you start feeling the black hole's effects.

Better put your shades on because while black holes don't admit in a light, they attract a lot of stars.

It would be a non stop cascade of light, and according to Stephen Hawking, there would be radiation to.

It would also be getting quite hot.

Black holes are freezing cold on the inside, some black holes.

Internal temperature could drop toe only 11 millionth of a degree above absolute zero.

But on the outside, black holes have neutrino particles constantly colliding with each other and radioactivity heating their surroundings to millions of degrees.

This is the part where you should be totally toasted but I don't want to stop the story from getting to its destination.

You've already traveled thousands of light years.

What's a little heat, anyway?

It didn't stop Stephen Hawking from traveling tow, one of his most favorite places in the universe.

Hypothetically, of course, the greatest physicist of our time toured the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

And that wasn't the only place he visited you conjoined upon his adventures in a documentary from Our Friends at Curiosity Street.

Have you checked him out yet?

Curiosity Stream is a video streaming service, and they have thousands of award winning documentaries for you to enjoy.

And since they also happen to be the sponsor of this, what if episode?

You get the 1st 30 days completely free, and after that it's only 2 99 a month, or just 1999 year.

You can sign up at curiosity stream dot com slash what f and use the promo code.

What if, during the sign up process for a deeper look at some of the topics we cover here at what if And don't worry, I didn't forget about you approaching the black hole can you hear me?

Sorry.

I forgot to mention the clouds of radiation and particles.

Thes clouds of hawking radiation would also be forming magnetic fields, throwing debris around at the speed of light.

How much closer could you get to the black hole?

After all, you don't want to fall into it.

Just visit.

Let's see the distance between a black hole's event horizon and its singularity is referred to as its shorts Shield radius.

After the German physicist and astronomer Carl Schwartz chilled, Schwartz Field Radius defines the size of a black hole's event horizon, a boundary beyond which you wouldn't be affected by a black hole as long as you stay on the opposite side of it.

The closest you could get to a black hole without being sucked in would be two times the Schwartz field radius.

But if you're looking to observe from a stable orbit, you'd better stay a distance of three times the Schwartz Shield radius.

And if you wanted to get back home safely, this is about as far as you could go.

Coming any closer to a black hole would start spaghetti if eyeing you at an increasing rate.

But that's a story for another.