To begin, this is not the way it ends.
Not the way that you and I die. Not the way all of mankind, all of civilization, all of the creatures of Earth, and all of Earth itself – and heaven, to boot – get vaporized into utter nothingness.
Don’t worry. Be happy. Or at least that’s what they tell us.
On Thursday, astronomers introduced the world to the first images of the supermassive black hole – called Sagittarius A, owing to its location near the constellation Sagittarius when viewed from Earth – looming voraciously at the center of the Milky Way.
I read the news in a panic, thinking, “Oh, OK, this is how we go extinct.”
Our sun and all of the worlds surrounding Sagittarius A, eventually, in some billion years if not tomorrow, get sucked into the spiraling madness of the black hole’s vicinity, heated to a trillion degrees and collapsed into oblivion.
At best, we become a yellowish burp of regurgitated energy in Sagittarius A’s glowing crown of destruction. And a footnote in the history of the universe, confirming that Albert Einstein, unfortunately, was right again.
It didn’t help several hours after the black hole reveal when I read the following on NASA’s website: “What would happen if you fell into a black hole?
“It certainly wouldn’t be good! … The immense gravity of the black hole would compress you horizontally and stretch you vertically like a noodle, which is why scientists call this phenomenon (no joke) ‘spaghettification.’” From human ball of meat to spaghetti. Great sense of humor these astrophysicists have. Hilarious.
But then I stumbled across this nugget of optimism on the NASA site: “There is no danger of the Earth (located 26,000 light years away from the Milky Way’s black hole) being pulled in” by Sagittarius A’s irresistible, gravitational maw.
Yeah, don’t worry about that gangsta cross town, right? His territory ends at Sleep With The Fishes Avenue and Spaghettification Boulevard. He ain’t comin’ to y’all’s neighborhood.
To be clear, Sagittarius A is the biggest, most violent bully on the Milky Way block.
It has 4.1 million times the mass of the sun, and its ilk has been known to rip stars apart and swallow them like a 350-pound brute hammering shells and slurping down clams.
Not to worry, astronomers say, as supermassive black holes go, ours is a “gentle giant.”
Take the behemoth in the Messier 87 galaxy, captured by Earth’s telescopes in a 2019 image. It has 1,585 times the mass of little ol’ Sagittarius A and shoots out quasars – spectacularly gushing jets of material across intergalactic space.
In contrast, the Milky Way’s gentle giant of a supermassive black hole is a mealy-mouthed wimp. Just ask Dr. Michael Johnson, an astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“If our black hole were a person,” the good doctor noted Thursday, “its diet would consist of one grain of rice every million years.”
But, of course, that’s what the Earth is, metaphorically speaking: One grain of rice among a gazillion scattered across the Milky Way.
Why would the black hole at the center of the galaxy even look our way when there are so many other rice grains to be eaten?
So just ignore this coincidence, which surprised astronomers: Sagittarius’ A’s ring of fire is actually tilted toward Earth, as if facing us.
Don’t worry. Be happy.
(Anderson) Herald Bulletin
