Ask Astro: Why are small black holes more dangerous than big ones?
The tidal forces at the event horizon of a stellar-mass black hole are much more violent than around a supermassive black hole. Even though a human falling into a supermassive black hole wouldn’t be spaghettified, a star still experiences tidal forces as it falls into a black hole, as shown in this artist’s concept. ESO, ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser Why would someone falling into a stellar-mass black hole be spaghettified, but someone crossing the event horizon of a supermassive black hole would not feel much discomfort? Robert Walty Stephens City, Virginia First, what exactly causes spaghettification? This process is the result of tidal forces, or the difference in gravity between two points. As it turns out, there is a relatively simple equation that describes the tidal acceleration that a body of length d would feel, based on its distance from a given object with mass M : a = 2GMd/R3, where a is the tidal acceleration, G is the gravitational constant, and R is t...