Illustration of a black hole tearing apart and devouring a star. Contrary to most popular representations, the overwhelming majority of matter accreted by the black hole or otherwise brought into its vicinity will not be devoured and swallowed, but rather accelerated and ejected. Black holes are messy eaters, and are practically never members of the ‘clean plate’ club. (DANA BERRY/NASA)

No, Black Holes Don’t Suck Everything Into Them

A vacuum cleaner is the wrong picture. Time to bust that myth.

There are no classes of object in our Universe more extreme than black holes. With so much mass present in such a tiny volume of space, they create a region around them where the curvature of space is so strong that nothing — not even light — can escape from its gravity once a certain boundary is crossed. That boundary is known as the event horizon, and anything from outside the event horizon that crosses inside will never get out.

This has led to a picture that most of us have in our heads about black holes that’s prevalent but incorrect: one where black holes suck all the matter from outside their event horizons into them. We think of black holes as cosmic vacuum cleaners, consuming everything that dares to approach their vicinity. Even though NASA itself has released videos illustrating this effect, it’s a complete falsehood. Black holes don’t suck, after all.

It’s easy to see how you’d think black holes would suck everything into them. Gravity…