Ever wondered what would happen if a tiny black hole zipped through your body? Surprisingly, the damage might not be as catastrophic as you think—at least for small black holes. Recent research by physicist Robert Scherrer from Vanderbilt University shows that even a massive black hole, weighing 100 billion tons, could cause less harm than a small bullet.
Scherrer explains that recent observations of black holes have piqued interest in how they might interact with us. Remembering a 1970s sci-fi story where a black hole passes through a person, he decided to investigate whether that could actually happen.
Black holes with less mass, known as primordial black holes, may explain dark matter, the unseen substance that adds extra gravity throughout the universe. These black holes could have formed right after the Big Bang, from very dense regions of space. However, their existence is still debated among scientists; the conditions to create them might have been rare.
So, how likely is it for a black hole to pass through a person? Scherrer’s calculations reveal that a primordial black hole needs to weigh at least 140 quadrillion grams—about 140 billion metric tons—to inflict serious harm. For context, that’s roughly seven times heavier than the asteroid **Toutatis**.
At this weight, the black hole is tiny—just 0.4 picometers in diameter. For reference, a hydrogen atom is around 106 picometers wide. If such a small black hole traveled at about 200 kilometers per second, it wouldn’t interact much with our body. However, it would create a shock wave similar to that of a 0.22 caliber bullet, tearing through flesh.
But that’s just one way it could harm you. Black holes also exert gravitational pull, which isn’t uniform. The closer you get, the stronger the pull, leading to a phenomenon called “spaghettification.” While gravity is weak on a small scale, it could stretch and tear tissues if the black hole has enough mass—around 7 trillion metric tons, comparable to the mass of the asteroid **Iris**.
The damage caused by a black hole would be serious, but it’s not as if you’d be devoured entirely like a star. Scherrer notes that encounters with these black holes are extraordinarily rare. He estimates the odds of a human collision to be about once every quintillion years—far longer than the current age of the universe, which is 13.8 billion years.
Experts agree that while primordial black holes are a fascinating theoretical possibility, they may not even exist. Scherrer emphasizes that a large black hole could be dangerous, much like a gunshot, but a smaller one would likely go unnoticed.
So, no need to lose sleep over black holes! This intriguing research is detailed in the International Journal of Modern Physics D.
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