If a black hole were to fly close to Earth, it could cause the planet to heat up, the oceans to evaporate, and life to become impossible.
Black holes are nearly invisible objects so powerful that even light cannot escape them. What happens when such an object enters the Solar System depends on many factors, including the size and distance of the black hole, according to Live Science. The known black holes are either stellar black holes (ranging from a few times to 100 times the mass of the Sun) or supermassive black holes (ranging from 100,000 to billions of times the mass of the Sun), which are usually located at the centers of galaxies.
A black hole can have relatively little effect or completely destroy Earth depending on its mass and position. (Image: Cavan Images / Luca Pierro).
If a stellar black hole or larger were to pass through the Solar System, it could cause disaster depending on how close and fast it is moving. If the black hole were to pass through the Oort Cloud, the most distant area of the Solar System, it could disturb the orbits of comets and asteroids, sending them hurtling toward Earth, according to Karina Voggel, a postdoctoral researcher at the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center in France.
If the black hole comes closer, at a distance of 100 astronomical units (the average distance from Earth to the Sun, approximately 150 million km), beyond the orbit of Pluto, it could change the orbits of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. However, it is likely that Earth would not be significantly affected.
Only if the black hole were to pass between the orbits of Uranus and Pluto would Earth begin to feel the effects. Those two planets could be attracted to the black hole enough to orbit around it. As a result, Earth’s orbit would also be altered, changing the seasons and possibly leading the planet into an ice age or causing temperatures to rise to the point where life on Earth would go extinct.
If the black hole were to enter the orbit of Saturn, it could push Earth out of the habitable zone where liquid water can exist. If the black hole were in the orbit of Jupiter, Earth would begin to orbit around it. In the scenario where the black hole is even closer, positioned between Earth and Mars, tidal effects would heat Earth, causing the oceans to evaporate and eliminating the possibility of life.
However, experts believe that all the scenarios described above are extremely unlikely to occur. “We worry about asteroids occasionally colliding with Earth because there are so many of them. But black holes are much rarer in the universe. The chances of a black hole passing through the Solar System are extremely low, and the chances of it colliding with something even lower,” said Robert McNees, an associate professor of physics at Loyola University in Chicago.
