Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes some crazy ideas for how to tinker with the universe and tests their effects against the laws of physics, from snapping the moon in half to causing doomsday events with gravitational waves. apple, Spotify Or check out our podcast page.
The early universe may have been littered with black holes smaller than atoms but as massive as mountains. If these primordial black holes really exist, they would solve some of the biggest problems in cosmology and create endless opportunities for the Society of Dead Planets to get up to some mischief.
In this episode, hosts Chelsea White and Leah Crane are joined by black hole astronomers. Alison Kirkpatrick Researchers at the University of Kansas are exploring what would happen if they placed a primordial black hole inside a variety of objects, from the Sun to Earth to the human body, and the results aren’t as simple as you might expect.
For a very small black hole, putting it inside a star or planet wouldn’t have much of an effect: it would either go straight through or remain near the center, depending on the object’s mass. But if the black hole were a bit larger — perhaps the mass of the Earth and the radius of a grape — things start to get interesting. Such a black hole would dramatically shorten the lifespan of the Sun or devour a planet from the inside.
On the plus side, a black hole in this size range could potentially be used to harness its gravity to reorganize the universe — for example, a small black hole near the surface of the Moon could stop the Moon’s inevitable retreat from Earth.
Kirkpatrick says that humans can stand just a few meters away from a small black hole and be pretty safe, but the closer you get, the more the black hole’s gravity will affect the parts of your body closest to you, ripping you apart if you get too close. Even if you could somehow teleport a black hole into your body, it probably wouldn’t work.
Kirkpatrick says that a primordial black hole should never be placed inside the human body under any circumstances because it would immediately wreak havoc on the human body. The American Medical Association did not respond to a request for comment on the effects of black holes on the human body.
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