Black hole death: How extreme tidal forces turn humans into spaghetti

Getting to close to a black hole is a nightmare waiting to happen.

  • Like ocean tides caused by gravity, a nearby black hole would create a 'tide' inside your body, which is mostly water.
  • As your body drew nearer to the black hole, your head would be stretched away from your feet.
  • Scientists call this streching "spaghettification", from the word of spaghetti.
Keep reading Show less
nasa science astronomy space death human body michelle thaller ask an astronomer cosmos moon black holes

Rotating black holes may serve as gentle portals for hyperspace travel

Feel like traveling to another dimension? Better choose your black hole wisely.

One of the most cherished science fiction scenarios is using a black hole as a portal to another dimension or time or universe. That fantasy may be closer to reality than previously imagined.

Keep reading Show less
physics astronomy universe cosmos dark matter space time black holes

Ask a NASA astronomer! How did Stephen Hawking change the world?

Stephen Hawking was one of the greatest scientific and analytical minds of our time, says NASA's Michelle Thaller.

Stephen Hawking was one of the greatest scientific and analytical minds of our time, says NASA's Michelle Thaller. She posits that Hawking might be one of the parents of an entirely new school of physics because he was working on some incredible stuff—concerning quantum entaglement— right before he died. He was even humble enough to go back to his old work about black holes and rethink his hypotheses based on new information. Not many great minds would do that, she says, relaying just one of the reasons Stephen Hawking will be so deeply missed. You can follow Michelle Thaller on Twitter at @mlthaller.

stephen hawking stephen hawking legacy stephen hawking NASA michelle thaller NASA black holes quantum entanglement videos

Einstein’s Gravitational Theory Leads to Nobel Prize Win for Scientists Who Proved It

These scientists scooped up the Nobel by detecting a ripple in space-time.

Albert Einstein. Credit: Getty Images.

Officials in Sweden have just announced the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. Three American scientists won for detecting, for the very first time, gravitational waves or ripples in space-time, which were first predicted by Einstein back in 1916. Rainer Weiss of MIT, and Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of Caltech were this year’s recipients.

Keep reading Show less
Nobel Prize gravitational waves Albert Einstein black holes LIGO physics space-time Rainer Weiss Barry Barish Kip Thorne MIT Caltech

Gravitational Wave Astronomy: When Stars Die, New Sciences Are Born

Get ready for a decade of scientific revelations. Thanks to gravity waves, we have a completely new way to explore the universe.

Alex Filippenko is a Hertz Foundation Fellow and recipient of the prestigious Hertz Foundation Grant for graduate study in the applications of the physical, biological and engineering sciences. When the discovery of gravitational waves was announced in February 2016, Filippenko was awed. The researchers at LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) managed to prove a key prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity: his theory of gravity. Here, Filippenko explains the mind-boggling way they did it, and the scope of discoveries that this hyper-precise technology will reveal to us over the next decade. With the support of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, Filippenko pursued a PhD in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.

Keep reading Show less
LIGO Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Hertz Foundation gravitational waves theory of general relativity proof Einstein astrophysics space black holes videos