If a black hole entered our solar system, would it head for Earth?

No, but depending on its mass it would sure as heck make life very uncomfortable for us. A Jupiter-sized black hole would be only a meter across and detectable only by the substantial perturbations it would make as it crossed the orbits of the planets. Many would be thrown into highly elliptical or 'comet like' orbits that, for Earth, would spell the end of the biosphere as we know it. We would easily loose most billions of people from crop failures and lack of cold weather protection from hypothermia. For a solar- mass black hole, only a couple of kilometers across, not only would planetary orbits be perturbed, but some might even be ejected from the solar system entirely.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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