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November 6, 2020 05:25 pm

What Would We Experience If Earth Spontaneously Turned Into A Black Hole?

Ethan Siegel, writing at Medium's Starts with a Bang: Either way, the first thing that would happen would be a transition from being at rest -- where the force from the atoms on Earth's surface pushed back on us with an equal and opposite force to gravitational acceleration -- to being in free-fall: at 9.8 m/s2 (32 feet/s2), towards the center of the Earth. Unlike most free-fall scenarios we experience on Earth today, such as a skydiver experiences when jumping out of an airplane, you'd have an eerie, lasting experience. You wouldn't feel the wind rushing past you, but rather the air would accelerate down towards the center of the Earth exactly at the same rate you did. There would be no drag forces on you, and you would never reach a maximum speed: a terminal velocity. You'd simply fall faster and faster as time progressed. That "rising stomach" sensation that you'd feel -- like you get at the top of a drop on a roller coaster -- would begin as soon as free-fall started, but would continue unabated. You'd experience total weightlessness, like an astronaut on the International Space Station, and would be unable to "feel" how fast you were falling. Which is a good thing, because not only would you fall faster and faster towards the Earth's center as time went on, but your acceleration would actually increase as you got closer to that central singularity.

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