What will happen when a black hole hits Earth?
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be devastating. Here’s what would happen, plus how to avoid it.
Out there, somewhere in the Universe, our potential doom awaits us. Although the stars in the night sky seem fixed and unmoving, much like our Sun, they’re all engaged in the same gravitational dance that keeps us in orbit around the center of the Milky Way. Every stellar system that’s out there is in motion relative to the Sun, and periodically — a few times every million years or so — one of those objects gets perilously close to our Solar System. When that occurs, it typically perturbs some of the members of our Oort cloud, leading to a potential barrage of comets down the line.
Although that’s what most frequently occurs, worse outcomes can indeed ensue. Stars could pass through the Solar System, affecting the orbits of the planets. Other objects like black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, and rogue planets can do the same thing, knocking objects around like a cosmic game of billiards. In the worst case scenario, you can even imagine a black hole striking the Earth. The odds of it may be unlikely at any moment in time, but astronomical timescales are very long and the Universe has many, many opportunities to create even extremely unlikely catastrophes…
