Brief History of Black Holes

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1. mptestDec 2023
   Also, I'm just starting the book but I love the authors youtube videos and it seems germane, a brief history of black holes by dr becky smethurst seems to have decent reviews and her videos are great. Maybe check her out on youtube if you're more experienced but I'm finding her book fun as a layman
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2. komali2Apr 2023
   I recently read "A Brief History of Black Holes" by Dr. Becky Smethurst and I recommend it if you're interested in these things. She wrote that the math indicates you have no reason to fear a black hole consuming you, or this solar system.

   Black holes are just massive objects, no different from any other "massive object" in the universe. It's pretty easy / common for stuff to orbit massive objects, rather than fall into them. Furthermore I vaguely remember her mentioning another force involved with pushing things away from black holes, such that physicists of today aren't able to reach consensus on the idea that maybe one day all mass in the universe will be in one black hole or another, it seems there's other forces involved that may prevent that from happening (though there are hypothesis around that time is a cycle of all things falling into a universal singularity which then explodes into a big bag and the cycle continues).

   In short though, no, you shouldn't be terrified. There has been an ongoing theory for a while that there's a micro black hole somewhere near pluto causing our predictions for its orbit to be just ever so slightly off. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933280-100-is-there... If it's there, it's been there basically forever, and its event horizon, if it's a micro black hole, is hilariously small.

   https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61324554

   Also as others have said, if it's coming directly for earth, it would take at least 1500 years to get here, which is plenty of time for humans to do something about it. Almost certainly you'll already be dead anyway.

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3. bookofjoeMay 2023
   Once upon a time black holes were purely theoretical.

   See, for example:

   >The Country Parson Who Conceived of Black Holes [in 1783]

   https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosm....

   >A Brief History of Black Holes

   https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosm....

   >At a conference in New York in 1967, Dr. Wheeler, seizing on a suggestion shouted from the audience, hit on the name “black hole” to dramatize this dire possibility for a star and for physics.

   https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/science/14wheeler.html#:~....

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