 http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/encyc_mod3_q13.html |
So there's
a fun episode of Doctor Who called "The Satan Pit"
where the Doctor and his companion find themselves
on a planet in orbit around a black hole. We wanted
to know if that was possible. Turns out, an object can
be in orbit around a black hole, it just has to be
moving really fast. The picture to the left
describes what sort of orbit an object would have if
it was orbiting a black hole. According to
Hubblesite, if a person were to launch their
spaceship with intermediate speed, they would orbit
the black hole in this pattern. The first thing that
can be noticed about the orbit is that it is
elliptical, and it does not stay in the same spot.
The object in orbit moves around but will shift a
little to create a new ellipse. |
| So orbiting
a black hole is possible, but Doctor Who took it a
bit too far and created an impossibility in the
episode: they decided to put the orbit around the
black hole inside the event horizon. The event
horizon of a black hole is a boundary that marks the
limits of a black hole. At the event horizon, the
escape velocity (a velocity fast enough to escape
from a gravitational center of attraction) is the
same as the speed of light. So what that means is
everyone on the planet should have been sucked in
years ago. A fun fact about the event horizon is
that since nothing can escape it, that nothing
includes light! |
 http://www.rkm.com.au/ANIMATIONS/animation-graphics/Black-Hole-Rosette-Orbit-label.png |
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